STANFORD — A student journalist at Stanford University will not face criminal charges related to his arrest last June while covering a group of pro-Gaza demonstrators who barricaded themselves inside the president’s office, following months of public pressure from free-speech advocates to clear the student’s name.
On Thursday, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office announced that it will not file charges against Dilan Gohill, who was among 13 people — many of them students — who were arrested June 5 after the office takeover.
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The DA’s office, which typically does not publicly announce non-charging decisions save for high-profile cases, said its investigation confirmed Gohill’s contention that he was embedded with a group of protesters but did not participate in their actions.
“This office supports a free press and recognizes that the law gives reporters latitude to do their jobs in keeping the public informed,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement Thursday. “We have no evidence that this student did anything other than cover this event as a journalist.”
Rosen’s office added that it is still reviewing the cases of the other arrestees.
In the intervening months since Gohill’s arrest, free-speech advocates representing journalists and attorneys banded together to object to the notion of criminal charges for the student journalist, and lamented the amount of time the district attorney’s office was taking to reach a decision. The office contended it was seeking a full picture of the situation, and had been awaiting information from the Stanford Department of Public Safety to complete its charging evaluation.
Gohill was covering a protest that was part of a nationwide movement led by pro-Gaza student groups, entailing encampments and demonstrations to urge universities to divest from companies linked to the Israeli government or military. At Stanford, an encampment was dismantled by the university, a move that was followed by a campus ban on overnight encampments.
During the barricade situation, authorities say hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage was inflicted inside the office building. Elsewhere during the June campus demonstrations, the school’s historic sandstone structures were defaced with profanity-laced graffiti, though it remains unclear who was responsible for the graffiti since multiple groups, including individual protestors and counter-protestors, were on campus that week.
The university ended its administrative review of Gohill in January and declined to seek any disciplinary action for him, making the charging decision the remaining sticking point for supporters who saw the controversy as a clear-cut instance of constitutionally-protected journalistic activity. Critics also took issue with the university not taking a public stance to advocate against criminal charges.
In a statement issued after the disciplinary probe was dropped, Gohill said: “Independent student journalism is crucial, and my arrest as a first-year journalist and Stanford’s response threaten the values the institution claims to uphold. I remain deeply concerned that the university’s actions have had a chilling effect on the free press and student journalists’ ability to share vital information without fear of retaliation.”
His attorney has previously said the criminal investigation notably hampered Gohill’s academic performance, since he has been denied retrieval of his laptop computer, cell phone, lecture notes and other study materials.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.