Defense attorneys tried to sell a jury an outrageous justification for the actions of five anti-Israel current and former Stanford University students, who occupied and vandalized the school president’s office in June 2024, by claiming in court on Friday that the students opposed Israeli “genocide” in Gaza, legal experts told JNS.
“Anybody who tries to bring in a political defense to a murder charge or a vandalization charge or whatever, it’s not an exonerating feature. It’s an aggravating feature,” said Richard Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch professor of law at New York University and James Parker Hall distinguished service professor of law emeritus at University of Chicago.
Under the defense’s logic, “everybody can sack the president’s office, because each side can accuse the other of genocide,” Epstein told JNS.
Defenses can’t mention irrelevant things, according to Epstein. “That’s the way in which the prosecutor has to argue this,” he said. “Otherwise, this thing becomes a show trial.”
Kenneth Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, agreed.
“As a legal matter, there is no question that vandalism is a crime that should be prosecuted, regardless of whether it conveys a political message,” he told JNS. “The defendants seem to think that there should be an anti-Zionism exception to our criminal laws and policies, as if to say that Jews are so far outside the law as to justify whatever one wants to do to them.”
“Too many university administrators have acted in the past as if they think the defendants are right about this,” Marcus said.
Avanindar Singh, a deputy public defender in Santa Clara County representing a defendant, reportedly said in court that the defendants had “exhausted other options” to get university leaders to agree to their demands of divesting from Israel and dropping all disciplinary measures against anti-Israel student activists.
Robert Baker, a deputy district attorney in the county, said in court on Friday that what occurred in June 2024 was “attempted extortion,” per reporting in the J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Singh responded that it was a “campus sit-in to save lives” and that “protests are meant to be disruptive and bring attention to urgent issues that are otherwise ignored” and “disruption was a small price to pay,” per the paper.
Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that “the defendants are introducing ‘genocide’ not because it’s legally relevant, but to confuse the jury, normalize misuse of the term and excuse unlawful conduct.”
“It’s being used to generate sympathy and invite jury nullification, since justification, especially rooted in mistaken belief, isn’t a defense to these charges,” Filitti said. “This is nothing more than an attempt to excuse unlawful conduct through emotional manipulation.”
“It’s disappointing that the prosecutor didn’t charge attempted extortion,” he said. “Calling it a ‘sit-in’ doesn’t change the conduct or excuse it, and accountability is the only deterrent to protect people from being terrorized.”
Alyza Lewin, president of U.S. affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, told JNS that the protesters’ defense is “a justification for complete lawlessness.”
“It’s absurd,” she said. “We have rules in this country in order to try and help ensure and protect the safety and security of our citizens and the protection of our property and when those lines are crossed, people need to be held accountable, and they’re trying to weasel out from being held accountable for breaking the law.”
She added that the defense’s argument has “no end to it.” The defense’s logic would appear to suggest that “it’s okay to just massacre innocent civilians on a beach lighting a Chanukah menorah for a cause,” she told JNS.
“There’s no limit,” she said. “It doesn’t work.”
Seth Brysk, Northern California regional director at American Jewish Committee, told JNS that the claim of the defendants that Israel is guilty of genocide is “unconvincing.”
“There seems to be no doubt that they committed the crimes with which they are charged,” he said. “In their attempt to garner the attention of the university and change policy, they turned to violence and must now be held to account for the damage they caused.”
Jeremy Russell, director of marketing and communications for the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, told JNS that the public defender appears to be justifying “tolerance for a certain amount of lawlessness.”
“Are we to allow dangerous and destructive behavior when its committers claim to believe in the righteousness of their cause?” he said. “Also, one must ask, what lives were actually saved or could ever be saved by attacking an office in Palo Alto? It’s not as though the conflict wasn’t already everywhere in the news and across social media. The whole argument is dubious at best.”
Baker, the county deputy district attorney, told JNS that he couldn’t comment on the facts of the case but that the reporting in the Jewish paper is “accurate.”
The Sept. 29 indictment against 11 people charged with felony vandalism alleges that they caused at least $400 in damage and accuses them of conspiracy to trespass. Baker told JNS that six of the 11 have reached plea deals or agreed to diversion programs.”
“Three have indicated they will plead to misdemeanors later this month” and “three got mental health diversion,” although “we objected to two of them getting it and the judge overruled us,” he told JNS. Another “pleaded to the charges and got youth deferred entry of judgment, as he was eligible under the law,” Baker said.
Tali Klima, spokeswoman for the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, told JNS that in a country governed by the law, “there are legal means to protest and engage with decision makers.”
“Jewish businesses and individuals have been victimized in the name of this very cause, and our community, like all others, expects protection under the law,” she said. “It is unacceptable that the defendants chose to take the law into their own hands, regardless of their political beliefs or how justified they thought their cause was.”
