Five Stanford University students who faced prison sentences and thousands of dollars in restitution in connection to a campus protest against Israel’s war on Gaza had all charges dropped on Monday.
The students also had their restitution severely reduced, ending a two-year legal saga that also saw the lead prosecutor in the case removed by the court.
Part of a group of ۱۲, the students had been charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism in connection to an hour-long, June ۲۰۲۴ occupation during which the group barricaded themselves inside the university president’s office to demand Stanford consider a student resolution to divest from Israel, among other requests.
Some accepted plea deals or other diversion offers but five of the students went to trial earlier this year. The month-long trial ended with a hung jury but Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara county district attorney, immediately announced his intention to retry the case before a judge ordered his recusal in May over a conflict of interest that, the judge said during court proceedings, would “render it unlikely that the defendants will receive fair treatment”.
The case has since been taken over by the California attorney general’s office, which reached a resolution with the students. That resolution meant dropping all charges in exchange for ۱۰۰ hours of community service at a nonprofit of their choosing and a total restitution of about $۵۰,۰۰۰, far less than the $۱m prosecutors initially threatened them with and the $ ۳۲۹,۰۰۰ they each risked being found liable for at trial. The charges were the most severe handed out against students in connection to pro-Palestine protests on campus.
A spokesperson for Rosen referred questions about the case to the California attorney general’s office.
The attorney general’s office and Stanford University did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment.
Three of the students who had previously accepted misdemeanor pleas will also have their convictions withdrawn as part of Monday’s agreement once they complete the required community service.
Two of the defendants who went to trial earlier this year, German Gonzalez and Amy Zhai, spoke of their relief in exclusive interviews with the Guardian. The ordeal severely upended their lives and they shared their deep frustration at what they saw as Stanford and Rosen’s effort to criminalize and silence speech in support of Palestinians. They said that they hoped their win would encourage other students to continue to speak out.
“The most significant part of this is that I can continue to be involved in the Palestine movement in ways that were kind of curtailed by also being actively a defendant in a criminal case,” said Zhai, who graduated from Stanford as the trial got under way and is now in law school at a different university. “[The prosecution] was intended to silence speech about Palestine, and for everything that they threw at this case, they have failed.”
Zhai added: “People still very much care about Palestine but I think they are afraid, and reasonably so, because of everything that’s happened with the escalation of repression over the past two years. It takes victories like this one to encourage people to turn their beliefs into action.”
Thousands of students were arrested over their involvement in pro-Palestinian campus protests in the spring of ۲۰۲۴. Dozens were suspended or expelled from their universities, but most of those who also faced criminal charges have seen those charges dropped.
Abbee Cox, a member of the Stanford students’ legal team, told the Guardian that Monday’s resolution was in line with those reached in other cases relating to campus protests, which have mostly ended in diversion deals rather than severe sentences.
“The attorney general’s office has addressed this in a manner consistent with the way other peaceful student protesters at Stanford have been treated over the years – protesters against apartheid, against the Vietnam War,” she said. “But it took almost two and a half years of this painful and protracted and incredibly stressful battle to get there. And it took a fair prosecutor to get us there in the end.”
As protests flared up on campuses across the country in the first year of the Gaza war, the Stanford students briefly occupied the president’s office, renaming the building after Adnan al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon who was reportedly tortured to death while in Israeli detention.
They were immediately arrested, suspended, and banned from campus for two terms, but it was not until a year later, in April ۲۰۲۵, that Rosen announced criminal charges against the group, declaring at a press conference that “dissent is American, vandalism is criminal”.
Rosen was ultimately removed from the case in May, after the students’ legal team submitted evidence to the court that he had used the pending case to fundraise for his re-election, citing it in a webpage dedicated to showcasing his work to fight against “antisemitism”. The page was also emailed to a listserv of more than ۶۰۰ people, soliciting donations. Rosen responded to the recusal effort by accusing the student’s defense attorney of engaging in a “f—— antisemitic trope” in an interview with a local publication.
In pre-trial motions, Rosen had sought to ban the students from discussing “genocide”, as well as the political motivations behind the protest and free speech issues – a request the court denied. But he had successfully blocked the defendants’ efforts to have an international human rights expert testify, and from invoking the first amendment as a defense, on the grounds that the alleged conduct does not constitute protected speech.
Gonzalez, a sophomore at the time of the protest, is set to graduate this year but said he feels under scrutiny by university administrators.
“It’s difficult to go to classes and try to walk from your library to your classroom and get followed by campus security,” he said. “It feels demeaning, being surveilled to that degree … All I have done is stand up for what I believe in.”
