A man has been convicted of murder in the tragic stabbing death of a graduate student back in 2022.
Brianna Kupfer, who was 24 years old at the time of her death, was studying post-graduate material at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and working at a furniture store in Hancock Park. She was on the clock on a fateful day in January 2022, when Shawn Laval Smith stabbed her dozens of times in an apparently unprovoked attack.
The suspect, now age 34, was found guilty of first-degree murder as well as allegations that he stabbed her in a premeditated attack. The verdict was handed down on Tuesday September 10, one day after closing arguments in the trial began. Smith now faces a sentence of life in prison, should a judge decide he was sane at the time of the murder.
Kupfer was working by herself the day she was killed and was later found stabbed to death by a filet knife that punctured her liver, lung, and stomach. Habib Balian, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, emphasized in his closing arguments that audio recordings of Smith indicated that he was motivated to commit the crime because of his hatred of women.
Robert Haberer, the defendant’s attorney, did not try to argue that Smith was innocent. Rather, he said that the recordings—which came from two weeks before the murder occurred—only show that his client did not like people, men and women included. Haberer added that the stabbing was “an instant” decision and that accusing Smith of “reflective contemplation” ahead of time was a “ludicrous” argument.
In January 2022, Kupfer was stabbed 11 times by the homeless suspect. She was found with injuries to her chest, abdomen, pelvis, arms, and legs. Security footage put Smith at the scene of the crime. His DNA was also found on the knife that killed the graduate student. Smith was arrested days after the incident.
