Stanford Pro-Palestine Protestors Indicted for Barricading President’s Office

A Santa Clara County grand jury has indicted a group of pro-Palestinian Stanford University students on felony vandalism and trespassing charges, stemming from a June 2024 incident in which they broke into the campus president’s office and barricaded themselves.

Prosecutors with the District Attorney’s office secured the indictment against 11 students on Sept. 29, pushing the case toward a trial and rankling defense attorneys who say the move shunts key elements of a thus far public prosecution into secrecy.

“They made this a very public case. They decided to charge felonies, they decided to hold a press conference, they decided to seek national media coverage of this charging decision,” Jeff Wozniak, a defense attorney in the case, told KQED on Wednesday. “And now to hold a secret non-public hearing to secure an indictment is just outrageous to me.”

The group of students were previously arraigned on identical felony charges from the DA’s office in the spring, a little less than a year after their action, which marked one piece of a broader campaign pushing Stanford to divest from companies or industries supporting Israel’s military offensive of Gaza.

Wozniak and a group of other attorneys representing the students were seeking a preliminary hearing regarding those charges in open court, where a judge and defense attorneys can hear and question the validity of evidence from prosecutors before a case can head to a trial.

This week’s indictment, however, supersedes the prior charges, and allows the DA’s office to circumvent the preliminary hearing process. In indictment proceedings, prosecutors are the only people presenting evidence and witness testimony to a grand jury panel, which then privately deliberates to reach a decision on whether to bring charges.

“I think that they’re scared to have a public hearing and to be held accountable for what they’re alleging in this case. I think they’ve overcharged it. I don’t think that these are felony cases,” Wozniak said.

Robert Baker, a deputy district attorney heading up the case, disagreed with Wozniak’s characterization, and said the decision to use an indictment was for efficiency.

“We presented the case to the grand jury to get the case to trial as soon as possible and conserve judicial resources,” Baker told KQED. “We feel confident that the evidence is strong and that we can prove our case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Baker said trying to coordinate the schedules of 11 defendants and several defense attorneys for the preliminary hearing process would cause significant “logistical issues” and could take weeks of a courtroom’s time.

In this case, the grand jury heard testimony from two Stanford employees, including Caesar Campos, a public safety lieutenant, and Mitchell Bousson, the director of facilities. One other witness, John Richardson, was not a student but took part in the action in June 2024, but has since testified for the prosecution.

Richardson pleaded no contest to both felony charges earlier this year under a deferred judgement program for young people, and if he completes a probationary period without any other legal trouble, the charges against him will be dismissed, Baker said.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen, in announcing the initial felony charges in April, said the students crossed a line with their actions.

“Dissent is American, vandalism is criminal,” Rosen said.

The high-profile case is being prosecuted as the university itself has come under investigation by the Trump administration’s Department of Education, along with dozens of other schools, for alleged antisemitic discrimination and harassment, putting pressure on the schools to quell pro-Palestinian Gaza War protests on their campuses.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations roiled college campuses across the country last year, and while thousands of students were arrested, many saw charges dropped or faced misdemeanors.

Baker, when asked if he has been pressured at all in the case, said “absolutely not.”

“The decisions in this case were made entirely by the district attorney’s office without any outside pressure from Stanford, the Stanford Police Department or any other federal or state agency,” he said.

Stanford did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The university levied its own sanctions against the students, including two-quarter suspensions.

Wozniak said the students engaged in a “direct action” in line with many that have come before them at Stanford, and that the university’s claim for restitution of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the felony charges from the DA’s office, are purposefully overblown.

“They are trying to chill the student’s speech and trying to scare other students from demanding divestment from genocide, divestment from apartheid,” he said, “and they’re not going to accomplish those goals of chilling these students’ political actions.”

The students are set to be arraigned on the indictment on Oct. 6 at 9 a.m. at the Hall of Justice in San José.