Civil rights advocates, elected officials and a challenger to Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen gathered outside San Jose City Hall on Thursday to call for accountability from Rosen’s office. The gathering came days after a judge disqualified Rosen and his staff from retrying the felony case against pro-Palestine Stanford protesters, citing a conflict of interest.
The event, organized by the Coalition for Community Engagement and the San Jose Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP, drew a slate of speakers who tied last week’s recusal ruling to what they described as a broader pattern of bias, ethical lapses and wasteful spending in the district attorney’s office. Several speakers, including President of San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP Sean Allen, urged residents to vote for Daniel Chung in the June 2 primary, which will pit the incumbent Rosen against current district prosecutor Chung.
“We’re concerned about the lack of ethics and waste going on under DA Rosen over the last 16 years,” said Chung, who had been fired by Rosen during his role as a prosecutor and was later reinstated by a judge (Chung is currently suing Rosen, claiming that the latter is preventing him from coming back to work). He called the disqualification “a complete failure for our office” and said it showed that “ethics has been severely compromised.”
The charges stem from a June 2024 protest in which Stanford protestors occupied the president’s office to protest the war in Gaza. The four-week trial ended in a mistrial in February after a hung jury, and Rosen had announced plans to retry the case. But in the May 7 ruling, Paul found that the conflict of interest was “so grave as to render it unlikely that the defendants will receive fair treatment,” pointing to Rosen’s promotion of the case on a campaign website dedicated to fighting antisemitism and its use in fundraising materials. Rosen’s office has said it disagrees with the ruling but respects it.
The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area and Jewish Silicon Valley have said they are “deeply troubled” by the recusal, arguing it imposes a different standard on Jewish public officials
The Daily has reached out to Rosen’s office for comment.
Allen opened the gathering by arguing that the unusually strong rebuke from the bench pointed to a broader issue with Rosen’s conduct as DA. Allen argued that the finding should prompt scrutiny of other decisions across the DA’s office. He contrasted the Stanford retrial with the office’s handling of the death of Michael Tyree, a mentally ill man killed by prison guards, in which the office accepted a plea agreement rather than retrying the case after a conviction was overturned. According to Allen, the NAACP branch had received multiple complaints from Muslim and Palestinian community members, and pointed to disparities affecting Black and brown defendants.
Allen laid out three demands on behalf of the branch: an independent review of the County’s charging and prosecution patterns, transparent public reporting of racial and religious disparities in charging and sentencing and the routing of conflicted cases to the state attorney general’s office. “Every community in this county is entitled to equal protection under the law,” he said.
Santa Clara City Council member Kevin Park, who said he was speaking for himself rather than the city, accused Rosen — who created the country’s first Conviction Integrity Unit — of using talk of ethics to deflect from his own record as a prosecutor. “He’s not about freedom. He’s about friends and finances,” Park said. “He’s not really about reform. He’s about revenge.”
Other speakers focused on victims involved in Rosen’s prosecution efforts. Tony Labou, who identified himself as the brother of a murder victim, criticized Rosen’s efforts to revisit decades-old murder convictions, arguing the office was working “for the criminals, not for victims.” Margaret Petro, who said she spent more than four decades as a victim advocate, said she found the office’s direction “deeply troubling” and urged residents to weigh the issue before voting.
Vita Vang, a candidate for San Jose City Council District 5, also addressed the crowd, saying residents “deserve transparency” and “leaders whose we can trust.”
Chung detailed what he characterized as mounting legal and financial problems for the office, claiming Rosen is being investigated by the state Civil Rights Department. He also noted that Rosen has been sued by the ACLU and sued by a union representing government attorneys in the handling of Chung’s own employment. Chung said the office had spent county money on outside counsel, naming the Renne Public Law Group, and argued the county needs “a new district attorney after 16 years.”
Edward Escobar, founder of the Coalition for Community Engagement, who had previously helped lead a recall effort against the Alameda County DA Pamela Price, argued that the upcoming DA election is the most effective way of holding Rosen accountable. When asked whether the coalition was calling for a recall of Rosen, Escobar said “anything is possible” and that “nothing is off the table.” “We should go vote for Daniel Chung on June 2,” he said, arguing a ballot result would “circumvent any recall.”
Regarding the legal status of the Stanford protestors’ trial, the case now rests with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who could continue the prosecution, reduce the charges, dismiss the case or appeal Paul’s recusal ruling. Rosen’s office did not have a representative at the event.