Prosecutors on Thursday filed felony charges against all 12 pro-Palestinian protesters except one current or former Stanford University student after breaking into the administrative office in June, causing widespread damage.
The charges were one of the most severely collected against participants at last year's pro-Palestinian demonstrations on university campuses. Over 3,000 people were arrested in university protests and camps in the spring of 2024, but we saw that they were generally charged with misdemeanors or that the charges were dropped.
Jehosen, a district attorney for Santa Clara County, including the Stanford campus, has charged 12 protesters with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy. They face up to three years and eight months in prison and are facing compensation payments to reimburse the damages to the university.
Stanford is one of dozens of schools being investigated by the Trump administration, about how they handled Palestinian protests and whether they did enough to fight anti-Semitism on campus. The administration has also revoked visas for several Stanford students and recent alumni, but it is unclear why. .
Rosen said President Trump's focus on Stanford and other universities played no role in his decision to accuse the crime of a felony.
“What the federal administration is doing is what they're doing. What I'm doing is applying California criminal law,” Rosen said.
Rosen said he was shaken by the extent of the damage caused by the protesters and what was marked as a deeply coordinated plan before the building was taken over.
“Whenever multiple people are working together to commit a crime, it's far more dangerous to the public,” he said. The action intended to highlight the group's opposition to the war in Gaza did not make a difference, he added.
“The speech is protected by the First Amendment,” he said. “Vandalism is being charged under criminal law.”
On June 5th, police broke into President Stanford's office early that morning and arrested 13 people in connection with barricades inside. They made several requests, including a vote on whether the university trustees would sell from companies supporting the Israeli military.
They were cleaned up from the building and were arrested within hours, but were arrested before breaking windows and furniture, breaking out any obstacles, or putting fake blood inside the building, Rosen said.
Rosen did not file charges against one of the 13 individuals, a student reporter for the Stanford Daily Newspaper, who covered the protests but did not participate. Lawyers said the freedom group of journalists and reporters had been demanding for months that Rosen refused to pursue charges against students who were detained in prison for 15 hours after his arrest.
Rosen said his office conducted a deliberate and systematic investigation before deciding that 12 of those arrested should be charged, but Gohill should not. He announced in March that Gohill had no charges.
Rosen said 12 protesters tried to hide communications, including deleting them from phones on signal messaging apps that exchanged messages shortly before their arrest.
He said his investigators were able to “evade” the protesters' attempts to hide their plans and found them monitoring the building. We studied the patterns of local police and security guards. I assigned specific tasks, such as who would break the window and who would use the clover to pry open the door.
The protesters were recovered at the barricade building and carried a backpack that contained a hammer, chisel, a driver and goggles, according to the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office.
Tony Brass, lawyer for Hunter Taylor Black, one of the protesters, said he was upset that it took Rosen more than 10 months to file his charges. Taylor Black, a 25-year-old Stanford film student, and other protesters, had already completed a suspension from the university and were beginning to regain their lives, Brass said.
“Student protests are a key voice in American history, and they've always been,” Brass said. “Everyone accepted that there were consequences for actions, and so did the protesters. But there was no need to add this delay. They should continue their lives.”
Eleven other protesters were unable to reach or did not respond to requests for comment.
On the same morning as the protest, red graffiti appeared on the main square sandstone walls of universities that denounced police, Stanford, Israel and the United States. Phrases include “The taste of the pig is dead” and “Death to Israel.” Rosen said he refused to file a hate crime claim because his office was unable to prove that 12 protesters were responsible for those messages.
Stanford spokesman Dee Motofi said on Thursday that the university respected Rosen's claim decision. The university was individually collecting its own sanctions against current students, protesters, including quarterly halted suspensions, delays in degree meetings and community service hours.
Rosen said he didn't want to see 12 Stanford protesters offering prison time. Instead, he pleaded guilty to them and asked them to join the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Work Program.
“It's like the Bible,” he said. “You destroyed the building, so your punishment should clean things.”
Felony charges against pro-Palestinian protests on campus have occurred in at least several cases over the past year.
The Michigan Attorney General has filed felony charges against seven University of Michigan protesters, accusing them of resisting police officers who smashed the camp in May 2024. These cases are still pending.
Eleven people were charged with felony vandalism in February at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. This was accused of being smeared with red paint over buildings and statues, causing $400,000 in damages.
Four students were charged with felony mischief at Rochester University in New York after publishing photos and a “Wanted” poster of a university community member, including a Jewish official, in November. The university president accused the poster of anti-Semiticism.
According to court documents, the severity of the charge was due to the cost of damage caused by the poster and was stuck to the chalkboard and walls with “super adhesive or similarly strong and durable adhesive.”
The fee is still pending.
Safa Robinson, a Rochester lawyer representing one of the students, said it is not uncommon for criminal mischief to be charged as a felony, as severity is determined by the cost of damages caused by the law. What's unusual, she said, is seeing such accusations brought against student protesters.
“In a university setting, posters are often painted all over the walls. Flats, sororities, sales, elections, everything like that,” Robinson said in an interview. “I think these posters are treated this way because they either touched on sensitive topics or had a certain view.”
