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Five Stanford University students began their felony trial at the Santa Clara County Superior Court Friday morning, after they were charged with breaking into and vandalizing the president’s office building as part of a June 2024 protest against the war on Gaza.
The students allegedly broke a window, spilled fake blood, ransacked drawers and demanded their university divest from companies supplying military aid to Israel.
Deputy District Attorney Rob Baker, who delivered his first opening statement in years, is leading the prosecution against the students — German Gonzalez, Maya Burke, Taylor McCann, Amy Jing Zhai and Hunter Taylor-Black — who are being charged with felony vandalism and conspiracy to trespass. The defense argued that these charges are an effort to chill free speech.
Six other protestors, Cameron Michael Pennington, Kaiden Wang, Eliana Lindsay Fuchs, Gretchen Rose Giumarin, Isabella Terrazas and Zoe Georgia Edelman took plea or alternative deals before the trial began and one protestor, John Thomas Richardson, is now working with the prosecution.
Now, after two arraignments, an indictment and nearly a year since the original complaint was filed, both parties had the chance to deliver opening statements to a jury in the highly anticipated case.
Baker’s opening statements painted a picture of a highly organized group that physically damaged campus grounds and attempted to use the building as leverage for their demands.
On June 5, 2024, protesters allegedly entered the building by breaking one window and allowing others to enter through doors. Once inside, they stacked furniture to block doors, secured them with cables, spilled fake blood made from corn syrup, covered security cameras with cloth and hung banners, according to surveillance footage shown during the trial.
“This was an attempted extortion,” he said.
Two door frames, which appeared to be chipped from force, cost $12,000 to repair, according to Baker, and an antique grandfather clock with few spatters of fake blood cost thousands to “assess.”
Footage played in court does not show the defendants directly damaging furniture, but Baker claims they had knowledge of the vandalism and should be charged with “aiding and abetting.” He also urged the jury not to “determine the morality of global warfare,” but to decide if two crimes were committed.
The prosecution argued that failing to charge the students would send a terrible message to Santa Clara County that “personal property does not deserve protection from those seeking political changes through destruction.” Felony vandalism is the result of $400 or more of damage, Baker said.
The defense painted a more exhaustive picture, focusing on the reasons for the students actions’ and providing details on their planning efforts — which showed intent to minimize damage.
Avi Singh, who represented Gonzalez, unfurled a large poster depicting a flow chart that detectives obtained through a warrant. The chart detailed ways that the protesters could enter the building. Primary options included entering unlocked doors, bribing security, or linking arms outside of the building if they could not enter.
Encrypted messages between group members also detailed their efforts to cease vandalism, according to Singh.
“They’re refusing to stop spray painting,” one message read.
Students attempted to clean up the spilled blood, did not interfere with police entering the building and were willing to exit the building when law enforcement arrived, according to evidence provided at the trial.
While the defense agreed with Baker’s assessment that the plan was well thought-out, it also emphasized the intended meaning of the students’ action.
“Israel has subjected Gaza to a severe siege and a relentless bombing campaign, resulting in the deaths of over 35,000 Palestinians, nearly half of whom were women and children,” a protester said in a video from inside the office. “As of this morning, Stanford University holds multimillion dollar investments in corporations that provide material and logistical support to Israel’s current military campaign.”
Students allowed a Stanford Daily reporter to enter the building and document their actions, said defense attorney Anthony Brass, who said that he believed that the students did not act with malice.
“This was a sit-in, in a building that celebrates sit-ins,” said Brass, echoing the defense’s argument that other groups of students had previously occupied the building in protest.
The June 2024 action followed months of Pro-Palestine encampments, protests on campus and a hunger strike demanding that the university discuss with students possible divestment from companies Hewlett Packard, Chevron and Lockheed Martin. The defense said their efforts were met with minimal engagement.
“This is not a criminal enterprise, this is their effort to send a message,” Brass said.
For supporters, Friday’s update was no different to pre-trial meetings. Dozens of people wearing keffiyehs and Palestinian flags quickly filled up the room and ate lunch outside of the courthouse with defendants. During the break, supporters played instruments and speakers discussed a willingness for “peace.”
The trial, which attorneys believe may go on for several weeks, is set to resume on Jan. 13.
According to Gemini, Stanford University is seeking $329,000 in restitution for damages. Not $12,000 as reported here. Do not turn this publication into a mouthpiece for the US Democratic Party. Do not defend felony vandalism. Do not be antisemitic.
Tal, you are absolutely correct: Stanford University is seeking $329,000 in restitution for damages.
I believe your misunderstanding of the reporting is: During the opening statements, Deputy D.A. Rob Baker highlighted specific repairs (the $12,000 for two door frames) specifically to satisfy the legal threshold required for a felony charge. The $329,000 total Stanford is seeking includes the much larger costs of cleaning ‘fake blood’ off historical documents, repairing a shattered window, and the removal of graffiti from the Main Quad’s sandstone.
This article contains a truthful and accurate reporting on the evidence presented by the prosecution to prove the felony.
Regarding your concern about antisemitism, could you clarify which part of the reporting you found problematic? I have read and reread this article and find it to be extremely fair, fact-based reporting. I don’t see anything in it that may be termed antisemitic. I would like to understand your perspective and know which of the many constantly changing definitions of antisemitism you are using.
So I can break into and damage private property and claim it’s OK if there’s a tenuous connection between the property owner and someone (allegedly) doing something bad on the other side of the world? That’s an interesting rule.
@IVG, No! Please don’t break in anywhere and cause property damage! I don’t think that is the correct takeaway from this article, and I don’t believe the reporter is suggesting that.
However, you’ve identified the central question of the trial: The defendants admit to staging a sit-in and to shattering a window, chipping two door frames, and spreading corn syrup made to resemble blood. The District Attorney and Provost Martinez assert these acts were part of a wider conspiracy to commit over $300,000 in vandalism, arguing the defendants should also be financially liable for the cost of removing graffiti that was sprayed in the Quad while they were barricaded inside the President’s and Provost’s office building. The defendants believe that the graffiti was sprayed by unidentified outsiders in an attempt to discredit them and admit no responsibility for it.
Even if the prosecution fails to convince the jury to hold the defendants liable for damage done outside the office building while they were inside it, they are still pushing for felony vandalism convictions. Since the legal threshold for a felony in California is only $400, they are arguing that the chipped door frames alone cost $12,000 to repair.
I fear nobody will come out of this case looking good: District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s public appearances with Benjamin Netanyahu and deep family ties to AIPAC suggest he is not willing to do his job equally or impartially. Provost Jenny Martinez, an international human rights lawyer, appears to be colluding with him to weaponize the law against students whose chief crime is that they care more about international human rights than she does. Finally, 1960s rebels like former Mountain View Mayor Lenny Siegel—who was once suspended from Stanford for actions including breaking windows at the Stanford Bookstore and the Hoover building and the intentional destruction of university property—now will talk about anything but this case and this genocide.
In case anyone missed it, my comment refers to the cute legal theory being advanced by the defense counsel.
In case you missed it, I have been outspoken against continuing Israeli genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. The Stanford Corporation’s response to peaceful camp-outs and sit-ins goes way beyond its level of repression in the 1970s, when some people in the movement against Stanford’s role in the Southeast Asian wars did actually engage in deliberate property destruction. As a Jewish-American who helped overcome Stanford’s historical bias against Jewish student applicants and professors, I bristle at the suggestion that criticism of Israel is a manifestation of anti-semitism. In fact, most Jewish-Americans that I know are critical of the actions of Netanyahu and his allies, both in Israel and here in the U.S.
@Lenny, thank you for your response. Please accept my apologies; I was not aware you had been outspoken on this issue. I voted for you in 2014, 2018, and 2020. I searched online but couldn’t find a record of your statements or those from the Mountain View Voices for Peace and Justice, so I am very glad to know I was mistaken.
Would you mind sharing where I can find your opinions on the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank? Do you think you would be willing to use your platform to call out Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez and District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s office for cynically weaponizing their positions of trust and our penal code to make a mockery of our legal system to further political ends?
Perhaps you might even consider penning a “Guest Opinion” for the Mountain View Voice? It would be powerful to see you compare Stanford’s current actions with your own experiences with groups like “Students for a Democratic Society” (SDS) and the “April Third Movement.” At this point in history, we are in urgent need of unequivocal voices insisting that all humans are equally deserving of dignity and respect irrespective of what group they may have been born into, and that fascism is a cancer that no community is immune from and it must be called out wherever it manifests itself.