Samuel Woodward, 27, was convicted earlier this year of murder as a hate crime for the killing of Blaze Bernstein, a gay, Jewish college sophomore. He was sentenced on Friday at the Orange County Superior Court but did not appear due to illness.

A California judge sentenced Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 26, of Newport Beach to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury in July found him guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement in the death of Blaze Bernstein, who was 19 at the time of his death and home from college on winter break in 2018.

Blaze Bernstein -- a 19-year-old gay, Jewish student at the University of Pennsylvania -- was found buried in a park stabbed to death.