USA (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Five Stanford University students go on trial over felony charges tied to a pro-Palestinian campus protest, the harshest case from nationwide Gaza rallies.
The twelve students from northern California were charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism in connection with an hour-long occupation of the university president’s office in June 2024. During the occupation, the group barricaded themselves inside the president’s office and demanded, among other things, that Stanford consider a student resolution to divest from Israel.
The students in question informally renamed the building after Adnan al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon who was allegedly tortured to death while in Israeli captivity, following similar moves at other US campuses.
Following their arrest, the university suspended the students and barred them from campus for two terms until an internal disciplinary procedure determined that they had broken university rules.
Then, in April 2025, almost a year after the demonstration, Jeff Rosen, the district attorney for Santa Clara County, announced criminal charges against the group amid a wave of prestigious US universities facing funding cuts from the Trump administration over allegations of failing to take action against antisemitism on campus.
At a press conference, Rosen declared “dissent is American, vandalism is criminal”, adding:
“What the defendants chanted as they went about those plans is legally irrelevant … Pouring invective on to social media is not against the law; pouring fake blood all over someone else’s workplace is.”
A spokesperson for Stanford referred questions about the trial to Rosen’s office.
“We believe the decision on how to proceed with the criminal cases rests with the Santa Clara county district attorney’s office based on the evidence gathered,”
the spokesperson said.
“We respect their decisions in this matter.”
Rosen’s office declined to comment on the timing of the charges and their unique severity.
“As we continue with this trial, we are solely concerned with and focused on the criminal allegations faced by the defendants,”
a spokesperson for the office said.
“It would be both unethical and unfair for us to try to prosecute our case through your story.”
Several of the students who were initially charged accepted pre-trial plea agreements or other diversionary options, and one of them cooperated with authorities and was not indicted.
Two of the five, who have entered not guilty pleas and are on trial at the Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, stated in an interview that they are trying to maintain the focus on Palestinians and what they see as “Stanford’s complicity with Israel’s genocide.”
“It is ridiculous for me or for any of us co-defendants to be accused of property damage,”
said German Gonzalez, who was a sophomore at Stanford at the time of the protest.
“This is all just a distraction from the very real property destruction and crimes that are occurring in Gaza every day because of Stanford University’s investments and actions.”
Due to their participation in the civil riot that broke out in the spring of 2024, numerous scholars were arrested, and numerous were suspended or expelled from their universities.
Still, the maturity of people who were also charged with crimes have had those cases withdrawn. Prosecutors in New York decided not to file charges against scores of scholars who had taken over a lot structure in April 2024 and formally renamed it in honor of Hind Rajab, a six- year-old girl who was taken by Israeli dogfaces while contending for backing.
Seven demonstrators detained at a University of Michigan encampment had their charges dropped by Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel. Her vast connections to university regents were described, which demanded that she be prosecuted.
Additionally, most of the students detained in connection with protests at two different campuses in Los Angeles were not charged by the city’s prosecutors.
The Stanford group is one of the first to go on trial and the only ones to be charged with felonies, which are more serious offenses than the misdemeanors protesters are usually charged with.
They may spend more than three years behind bars if found guilty. Additionally, the university is requesting hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for what it claims was damage the building received during the demonstration; the students argue that these claims are “completely overinflated.” Rosen showed pictures of a shattered door frame and fictitious blood spilled on documents during the news conference announcing the allegations.
Gonzalez stated that the students claimed they had already received punishment when the university suspended them from school “faster than it suspended Brock Turner,” a Stanford student found guilty of sexual assault in 2016.
Gonzalez claimed that while the university demanded $329,000 in compensation from the group, which was” ten times” his family’s monthly income, Gonzalez and others were forced to sleep in motorcars or in teams’ lounges. He questioned Rosen’s provocations, citing a September 2023 visit to the Bay Area by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during which Rosen entered him on the field tarmac. He described the ongoing execution and its inflexibility as politically motivated and” cruel.”
“It’s meant as a deterrent for future protesters,”
Gonzalez said of the prosecution.
“To say that if you decide to stand up against genocide, apartheid, illegal occupation, and continued violations of international law, then you will be punished, and you will be punished as severely as you possibly can.”
The other defendant, Zhai, stated thatpro-Palestinian scholars are formerly reluctant to express their views in class as a result of the allegations. Still, those who are coming to court stopgap that the trial, which is anticipated to last five weeks, will be a chance to talk about their continued review of Stanford, especially its collaboration with US munitions company Lockheed Martin.
The execution tried to help the scholars from talking about” genocide,” the political reasons for the demonstration, and free speech enterprises inpre-trial movements; the court rejected this request.
Still, prosecutors were suitable to help the defendants from using the first correction as a defense and from having an transnational mortal rights expert swear.
“Our case is just one of many examples of what people have already called the Palestine effect,”
said Gonzalez.
“One of many examples of the system being stretched to its absolute limit to ensure that we receive the harshest punishment not for what we’ve done, but for what we think.”
What potential sentences each defendant faces if convicted?
Each of the five Stanford defendants faces identical implicit rulings if condemned on both felony charges.
California Penal Code§ 594 carries up to three times in state captivity for damages over $400 (as contended then, in the hundreds of thousands), plus forfeitures up to $10,000 and obligatory reparation; first- time malefactors may admit exploration, but felony- position damage reduces charity.
The conspiracy charge adds up to three times coincidently or successively, depending on judicial discretion; total exposure per defendant could reach six times if rulings mound, though pleas or mollifying factors like no priors frequently yield less.
