SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A judge declared a mistrial Friday in the case of five current and former Stanford University students charged after pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, when they barricaded themselves inside the university president and provost executive offices.
The trial in Santa Clara County was a rare instance of demonstrators facing felony charges from protests over the Israel-Hamas war that roiled campuses across the country. The two sides argued over free speech, lawful dissent and crime during the three-week proceedings.
The jury voted 9 to 3 to convict on a felony charge of vandalism and 8 to 4 to convict on a felony charge of conspiracy to trespass. After deliberating for five days, jurors said they could not reach a verdict.
Judge Hanley Chew asked each one if more time deliberating would help break the impasse, and all answered, “No.”
“It appears that this jury is hopelessly deadlocked, and I’m now declaring a mistrial in counts one and two,” Chen said. He then dismissed the jurors.
Demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the offices for several hours on June 5, 2024, the last day of spring classes at the university.
Prosecutors said the defendants spray-painted the building, broke windows and furniture, disabled security cameras and splattered a red liquid described as fake blood on items throughout the offices.
Defense attorneys said the protest was protected speech and there was insufficient evidence of an intent to damage the property. They also said the students wore protective gear and barricaded the offices out of fear of being injured by police and campus security.
If convicted, the defendants would have faced up to three years in prison and been obligated to pay restitution of over $300,000.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said he would pursue a new trial.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage,” Rosen said in a statement. “That is against the law and that is why we will retry the case.”
As the mistrial was announced, the students, some wearing kaffiyehs, sat on a bench in the courtroom and did not show a visible reaction.
“The District Attorney's Office had Stanford University supporting them and other multibillion-dollar institutions behind them, and even then the district attorney was unable to convict us,” Germán González, who was a sophomore at Stanford when he was arrested, told The Associated Press by phone later. “No matter what happens, we will continue to fight tooth and nail for as long as possible, because at the end of the day, this is for Palestine.”
Authorities initially arrested and charged 12 people in the case, but one pleaded no contest under an agreement that allows some young people to have their cases dismissed and records sealed if they successfully complete probation.
He testified for the prosecution, leading to a grand jury indictment of the others in October of the others. Six of those accepted pretrial plea deals or diversion programs, and the remaining five pleaded not guilty and sought a jury trial.
Protests sprung up on campuses across the country over the Israel-Hamas conflict, with students setting up camps and demanding their universities stop doing business with Israel or companies that support its war efforts against Hamas.
About 3,200 people were arrested in 2024 nationwide. While some colleges ended demonstrations by striking deals with students or simply waited them out, others called in police. Most criminal charges were ultimately dismissed.
This story has been updated to correct the jury counts on the two charges.
FILE - A campus maintenance worker carries a broken window from the office of the president at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., June 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File)
FILE - Students walk by graffiti near university president Richard Saller's office at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., June 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File)
MILAN (AP) — Ilia Malinin wound his way through the tunnels beneath the Milano Ice Skating Arena on Friday night, trying in vain to explain — or even just understand — exactly went wrong in an Olympic free skate that could only be described as a disaster.
Out in the arena, Mikhail Shaidorov was taking a victory lap wearing the gold medal everyone expected the American to win.
And playing over the loudspeakers: Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida,” and the lyrics that begin, “I used to rule the world ...”
In one of the biggest upsets in figure skating history, Malinin fell twice and made several other glaring mistakes, sending the “Quad God” tumbling all the way off the podium and leaving a star-studded crowd in stunned silence. And that cleared the way for Shaidorov, the mercurial but talented jumping dynamo from Kazakhstan, to claim the first gold medal for his nation at these Winter Games.
“Honestly, I still haven't been able to process what just happened,” Malinin said. "I mean, going into this competition, I felt really good this whole day. Feeling really solid. I just thought that all I needed to do was trust the process that I’ve always been doing.
“But it’s not like any other competition. It’s the Olympics,” he added, “and I think people (don’t) realize the pressure and the nerves that actually happen from the inside. So it was really just something that overwhelmed me and I just felt like just I had no control.”
Out of control is a good way to summarize the performance.
The 21-year-old Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.
Then there was Malinin, also 21, who dropped all the way to eighth. The two-time world champion finished with 264.49 points, his worst total score in nearly four years, and one that ended a two-plus year unbeaten streak covering 14 full competitions.
“Honestly, yeah, I was not expecting that,” Malinin said. “I felt going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.”
Much of Malinin' journey during the Milan Cortina Games had felt a little bit off.
He was beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, later acknowledging for the first time the pressure of winning at the Olympics was starting to get to him. And he still wasn’t quite his dominant self in the team free skate, even though a head-to-head win over Sato was enough to clinch the second consecutive gold medal for the American squad.
But by the time of his individual short program Tuesday night, Malinin’s fearless swagger and unrivaled spunk seemed to be back. He took a five-point lead over Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa of France that seemed insurmountable going into Friday night.
“Going into the competition,” Malinin said, “I felt like this is what I wanted to do, this is what we planned, this is what I practiced, and really just needed to go out there and do what I always do. That did not happen, and I don’t know why. ”
Malinin had decided to practice early in the day at U.S. Figure Skating’s alternate training base in Bergamo, just outside of Milan, and that gave him a brief reprieve from the pressure of the Olympic bubble. And he was the essence of calm throughout his warmup, never once falling in all of his practice jumps while wearing his familiar glittering black-and-gold ensemble.
Then came the performance that might well haunt Malinin for the rest of his career.
As the atmospheric music with his own voice-over began, he opened with a quad flip, one of a record-tying seven quads in his planned program. Then he appeared to be going after the quad axel that only he has ever landed in competition and had to bail out of it.
Malinin recovered to land his quad lutz before his problems really began.
He only doubled a planned quad loop, throwing his timing off. He fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second half of the quad lutz-triple toe loop combination. And in his final jumping pass, which was supposed to be a high-scoring quad salchow-triple axel combination, Malinin only could muster a double salchow — and he fell on that.
“He never messes up,” Italy's Daniel Grassl said, “so obviously we’re all a little surprised by how it went.”
By the time the music stopped, Malinin was left trying to mask his sorrow for a crowd that included Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion, along with seven-time Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles, actor Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Emilie.
"I knew that I could not have necessarily a perfect program and still manage to have a good skate. But just really, something felt off," Malinin said, “and I don’t know what it was, specifically. I’m still trying to understand what that was.”
Shaidorov seemed just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal.
He was only in sixth after the short program and an afterthought as the night began. But the world silver medalist, known for high-flying jumps but maddening inconsistency, delivered the performance of his life, landing five quads in a technically flawless program.
“It was my goal,” Shaidorov said simply, when asked about the gold medal. "It’s why I wake up and go to training. That’s it.”
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan reacts to his scores after competing during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan competes during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Ilia Malinin of the United States does a back flip while competing during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ilia Malinin of the United States falls during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's free skate program in figure skating at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ilia Malinin of the United States competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Ilia Malinin of the United States wobbles while competing during the figure skating men's team event at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
