Stanford student guilty for blocking bridge

Telschow is the second to be convicted by a jury as Paul Dwight Watkins II, 19, was found guilty last week of willfully and maliciously obstructing a person’s free movement in a public place.

Of the 68 students originally cited by the California Highway Patrol, 44 pleaded no contest and were sentenced to 30 hours of community service and are required to take a class on the First Amendment.

Watkins was given 45 hours of community service when he was sentenced last week. Telschow will be sentenced at a later date.

But the same jury in the Watkins case found co-defendant Maria Diaz-Gonzalez, 20, not guilty.

Prosecutors speculated the verdict may have been split in that case because Watkins was seen singing and chanting with arms intertwined with other Stanford students while Diaz-Gonzalez remained more in the background during the bridge protest.

Also Monday, a jury trial started against Clayton William Evans, 22, another Stanford student cited and released Jan. 19 for protesting a variety of topics including the shooting of a black man last year by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

The trial against another batch of students, Yeji Jung, Sevde Kaldiroglu and Tianya Katherine Pulphus, is also underway.

The county chose to prosecute the students because of the high number of victims.

Calls to 911 from some of the victims were part of the evidence prosecutors presented during the case.

The victims included a young mother with a newborn, an elderly man who needed to pick up his grandchildren and another who called 911 complaining that he needed to use the bathroom.

Prosecutor Jenna Johansson said last week during the Watkins trial that it was “pure luck” that the protest did not create an emergency on the bridge.

The group that organized the protest, Silicon Shutdown, could not be reached for comment Monday.

bill@smdailyjournal.com

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