Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- June 5, 2024
- Location
- Stanford, California
- Arrest Status
- Arrested and released
- Arresting Authority
- Stanford Department of Public Safety
- Charges
-
-
Theft: burglary
- June 5, 2024: Charges pending
- March 6, 2025: Charges dropped
-
Theft: burglary
- Unnecessary use of force?
- No
Arrest/Criminal Charge
- Equipment Seized
- Status of Seized Equipment
- In custody
- Search Warrant Obtained
- No
Equipment Search or Seizure
Protesters gather at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Stanford University in April 2024. When police arrested students occupying an office on the California campus on June 5, a student journalist for The Stanford Daily was detained and charged as well.
Prosecutors drop burglary charge against California student journalist
Prosecutors in Santa Clara County, California, will not pursue a felony burglary charge against student journalist Dilan Gohill, nine months after he was arrested covering a pro-Palestinian protest at Stanford University, Gohill’s attorney said March 6.
Gohill was reporting for The Stanford Daily on a group of protesters who had barricaded themselves in a campus building June 5. Officers from the Stanford Department of Public Safety and Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office detained him, even though he identified himself as a journalist and showed them his press credential.
Police seized his cellphone, laptop, and school notebooks, along with a camera belonging to the Daily. They also tried to unlock his phone using Face ID, but couldn’t when Gohill refused and turned his face away.
Stanford President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez, whose office was in the building occupied by the protesters, referred Gohill to Stanford’s Office of Community Standards and supported his criminal prosecution, saying that Gohill had no First Amendment right to “trespass in private buildings.”
But in January 2025, Stanford told the San Francisco Chronicle that it would not discipline Gohill. Prosecutors formally declined to pursue the criminal charge against him two months later.
“No journalist should ever have to endure a nine-month long threat to their academic, social, and professional future for simply doing their job,” Gohill said in a statement. “Their actions had a chilling effect on a free press, and even though their decision took far too long, I’m glad they finally realized that journalism is not a crime.”
Max Szabo, one of Gohill’s attorneys, criticized the university’s handling of the matter. “Stanford Department of Public Safety’s months-long delay in turning over this investigation to prosecutors should be viewed as suspicious, incompetent, or both,” he said.
Attorney Nick Rowley added, “While we celebrate this positive outcome, we cannot forget the lasting impact that such misplaced legal action has on press freedom and the rights of student journalists.”
The attorneys noted that none of Gohill’s seized equipment had yet been returned by the Department of Public Safety.
Dilan Gohill, a student journalist for The Stanford Daily, was arrested while reporting on a protest at the university’s campus in Stanford, California, on June 5, 2024.
The Daily reported that a group of students barricaded themselves into a building housing the president’s office at around 5:30 a.m., while more protesters gathered outside. The students demanded the school divest from weapons manufacturers, disclose endowment investments and drop disciplinary and criminal charges against pro-Palestinian students at Stanford.
Officers from the Stanford Department of Public Safety and Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office entered the building at approximately 7:20 a.m., according to the Daily, and arrested at least a dozen protesters. The Daily reported that one of its reporters — later identified as Gohill — was among those detained, despite identifying himself as a journalist and showing law enforcement his press credential.
Gohill was transported to the Santa Clara County Jail alongside the protesters, where he was held for approximately 15 hours before being released on $20,000 bail, the Daily reported. He faces a felony burglary charge, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Columbia Journalism Review reported that police seized Gohill’s cellphone, laptop and school notebooks, as well as a camera belonging to the Daily. Gohill told CJR that officers also “tried to hold my phone up and biometrically use my face ID to open my phone. And I literally turned my head and said, ‘I do not consent.’”
CJR reported that the equipment was still in police custody as of December.
Stanford President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez, whose office was also in the occupied building, issued a statement that day saying they were appalled and saddened by the protest, and that in addition to pursuing the criminal charges, all arrested students would be suspended and seniors would be barred from graduating.
In a subsequent letter to the Daily’s board of directors on June 7, Saller and Martinez claimed that the incident raised “serious questions of journalistic ethics,” and that Gohill had no First Amendment right to cover the protest.
“The First Amendment does not protect the right to break, enter and/or trespass in a locked private building, and this case did not involve a police line or rolling closure,” the letter read. “Moreover, as a matter of policy, allowing reporters a right to trespass in private buildings merely because there are newsworthy materials or events of interest inside would create a multitude of problems.”
Saller and Martinez added that while they fully support having Gohill criminally prosecuted and have referred him to Stanford’s Office of Community Standards alongside the other students arrested that day, they have lifted his interim suspension and campus ban.
In an op-ed about Gohill’s arrest, the Daily’s editors wrote, “His arrest constitutes a threat to the freedom of the press, including protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and we are disappointed in the actions of officers and the University.”
Neither Editor-in-Chief Kaushikee Nayudu nor an attorney representing the Daily responded to requests for additional information.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated in December 2024 to include details about the equipment seized from Dilan Gohill during his arrest.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
