Stanford Students’ Charges Dismissed in Pro-Palestine Protest Case After Two-Year Legal Ordeal

Five Stanford University students who faced potential prison time and substantial restitution over a campus protest against Israel’s war in Gaza had all charges dropped on Monday.

Their financial penalties were also sharply reduced, bringing closure to a two-year legal battle during which the lead prosecutor was removed by the court.

The five were part of a group of 12 students originally charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism for an hour-long occupation in June 2024, during which they barricaded themselves in the university president’s office to demand that Stanford divest from Israel and meet other requests.

While some accepted plea deals or diversion offers, five of the students went to trial earlier this year. After a month-long trial ended in a hung jury, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he intended to retry the case, but a judge ordered his recusal in May, citing a conflict of interest that would “render it unlikely that the defendants will receive fair treatment.”

The California attorney general’s office subsequently took over the case and reached a resolution with the students: all charges dropped in exchange for 100 hours of community service at a nonprofit of their choice and about $50,000 in total restitution—far less than the $1 million prosecutors initially threatened and the roughly $329,000 each faced at trial. These were the most severe charges brought against students in connection with pro-Palestine campus protests.

A spokesperson for Rosen declined to comment, referring questions to the California attorney general’s office.

The attorney general’s office and Stanford University did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Guardian.

Three students who had earlier accepted misdemeanor pleas will also have their convictions withdrawn under Monday’s agreement once they complete their community service.

Two defendants who went to trial earlier this year, German Gonzalez and Amy Zhai, told The Guardian they felt relieved but said the ordeal had severely disrupted their lives. They expressed frustration at what they described as Stanford’s and Rosen’s attempt to criminalize and silence pro-Palestinian speech, and hoped their victory would encourage others to keep speaking out.

“The most significant part is that I can now continue participating in the Palestine movement without the burden of an active criminal case,” said Zhai, who graduated as the trial began and is now studying law elsewhere. “The prosecution aimed to silence speech about Palestine, and despite everything they threw at us, they failed.”

Zhai added: “People still care deeply about Palestine, but I think fear—born of the escalating repression over the past two years—has silenced many. Victories like this are needed to turn belief into action.”

Thousands of students were arrested during pro-Palestinian campus protests in spring 2024. Dozens were suspended or expelled, though most who faced criminal charges have since seen them dropped.

Abbee Cox, part of the students’ legal team, told The Guardian that Monday’s resolution mirrored outcomes in other campus protest cases, which have generally resulted in diversion deals rather than harsh sentences.

“The attorney general’s office handled this consistently with how other peaceful Stanford protesters have been treated—those against apartheid, against the Vietnam War,” she said. “But it took nearly two and a half years of painful, protracted stress to reach this point, and it took a fair prosecutor to get us there.”

During the first year of the Gaza war, as protests erupted on campuses nationwide, the Stanford students briefly occupied the president’s office and renamed the building after Adnan al-Bursh, a Palestinian surgeon reportedly tortured to death while in Israeli detention.

They were immediately arrested, suspended, and banned from campus for two terms, but Rosen did not announce criminal charges until April 2025, 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 showed he had used the pending case to fundraise for his re-election, citing it on a webpage showcasing his work against “antisemitism” and emailing it to a listserv of more than 600 people to solicit donations. In response, Rosen accused the defense attorney of promoting a “f—— antisemitic trope” in an interview with a local publication.

In pre-trial motions, Rosen sought to ban the students from discussing “genocide,” the protest’s political motivations, and free speech issues—a request the court denied. He did, however, successfully block the defendants from calling an international human rights expert and from invoking the First Amendment as a defense, arguing the alleged conduct was not protected speech.

Gonzalez, a sophomore during the protest, is set to graduate this year but said he feels under scrutiny from university administrators.

“It’s hard to go to class or walk from the library to a classroom without being followed by campus security,” he said. “It feels demeaning to be surveilled that much… All I did was stand up for what I believe in.”

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