SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) – A California man convicted of stabbing a gay student at the University of Pennsylvania in a hate crime is expected to be sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Samuel Woodward, now 27, is scheduled to be sentenced in a Southern California courtroom for the murder of Blaze Bernstein nearly seven years ago. There is no doubt what sentence Woodward will receive because the jury’s verdict carries a sentence of life without parole, said Kimberly Edds, spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s office.

Defense attorney Ken Morrison previously said he would appeal the verdict.

Woodward was convicted this year of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement for killing Bernstein, a gay, Jewish sophomore.

Bernstein, who was 19, disappeared in January 2018 after going out at night with Woodward to a park in Lake Forest, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. After Bernstein missed a dentist appointment the next day, his parents found his glasses, wallet and credit cards in his bedroom and tried to reach him, but he was unresponsive.

Authorities launched an exhaustive search and said Bernstein’s family scoured his social media and saw he had been communicating with Woodward on Snapchat. Authorities said Woodward told the family that Bernstein had gone to meet a friend at the park that night and did not return.

Days later, Bernstein’s body was found in a shallow grave in the park. He had been stabbed several times in the face and neck.

The question during Woodward’s months-long trial was not whether he killed Bernstein but why and under what circumstances it happened. Prosecutors said Woodward was affiliated with the violent anti-gay, neo-Nazi extremist group Atomwaffen Division, while Morrison said his client did not plan to kill anyone or hate Bernstein and faced challenging personal relationships due to a long-undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder.

The case took years to go to trial amid a series of delays and sparked a public outcry in Southern California, where residents fanned out in 2018 to try to help authorities find Bernstein after he suddenly disappeared.

Woodward testified during the trial, giving slow, delayed answers to the lawyers’ questions with his long hair partially covering his face.

Bernstein and Woodward attended the same high school, the Orange County School of the Arts, and connected through a dating app in the months before the murder. Woodward said he picked Bernstein up, went to a nearby park and stabbed Bernstein repeatedly after trying to grab a cellphone he feared had been used to photograph him.

Morrison, the defense attorney, said Woodward was confused about his sexuality after growing up in a politically conservative and devout Catholic family where his father openly criticized homosexuality.

But prosecutors told a different story. They said Woodward had repeatedly targeted gay men online by reaching out to them and suddenly cutting off contact, while keeping a hateful, profanity-filled diary of his actions.

Authorities said they also found a black Atomwaffen mask with traces of blood, a folding knife with a bloody blade and a trove of anti-gay, anti-Semitic and hate group material in a search of his family’s home in Newport Beach, California.