Former Stanford student King Vanga killed Pamela and Joe Juarez in a car crash back in 2021. That is an undisputed fact. When the Juarez family told the university about the whole “killing two people” thing, however, Vanga sued for defamation, claiming they couldn’t call him a murderer because he had only been charged with vehicular manslaughter. As the Stanford Daily reports, though, in an actual victory for free speech protections, Vanga lost his lawsuit against Priscilla Juarez late last month.
King Vanga, who killed Pamela and Joe Juarez with his car, initially claimed a letter the Juarez family sent Stanford was defamatory because in it, they called him a murderer, claimed he was under the influence at the time of the crash and asserted that he’d violated the Stanford Code of Conduct. Vanga denied all of those claims. The court disagreed, saying the murder and code of conduct claims were opinions and considered protected speech under the First Amendment. The court also ruled that Juarez had reason to believe Vanga was under the influence at the time of the crash since it had been reported in the local news despite Vanga’s claim to the contrary:
On June 25, 2021, Vanga was involved in a car accident in Atwater, California, which resulted in the deaths of Jose and Pamela Juarez. Vanga was charged with two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, resisting an executive officer, attempting to take a peace officer’s firearm and battery upon a peace officer. Vanga pleaded not guilty to these charges.
Vanga allegedly declined a breathalyzer test at the scene, according to the law enforcement officer who responded to the accident. Still, the officer claimed that Vanga was under the influence. According to the police report, the officer “detected a strong odor of alcoholic beverage emitting from [Vanga’s] breath and person and observed his eyes were red.”
The media stories that circulated in the subsequent days also stated Vanga had been under the influence of either drugs, alcohol or both, as per law enforcement reports quoted within the case.
This prompted Priscilla Juarez and multiple other family members to write emails and letters to Stanford. In her email, she wrote she hoped the University would “take proper action in dismissing this man as an active student of [the] morally prestigious institution.”
…
In December 2021, Vanga threatened to sue Atwater police and California Highway Patrol for alleged mistreatment and false accusation of a DUI. Vanga alleged he was punched, kicked and tased twice by responding officers. Meanwhile, blood samples from the night of the accident showed no presence of drugs or alcohol.
Lawyer Ken “Popehat” White represented Juarez in the suit, filing an anti-SLAPP motion to have it dismissed on the grounds that the suit violated his client’s First Amendment rights. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and generally refers to lawsuits filed on questionable grounds with the intent to stifle free speech. Anti-SLAPP statutes allow defendants to have those lawsuits dismissed if the motion is granted and also recover any attorney’s fees.
“There’s a trend where rich people think that the poor should only have as much free speech as they can afford. And that to me, [that’s] what this case was about, and that’s why I’m glad we have a tool like the anti-SLAPP statute,” White told the Daily.
Unfortunately for the Juarezes, Vanga also filed defamation suits against other family members and those still haven’t been in front of a judge. But while nothing is guaranteed, it sounds like White believes there’s a good chance they’ll see similar results, telling the Daily, “Every case is a little different because every case is based on what that defendant said in their letter [to Stanford]. But in my view, [Priscilla Juarez’s family members] should be very optimistic based on this result.”
As we mentioned when we first reported on this lawsuit, no one forced Vanga to sue the Juarez family. He could have simply let this whole thing go and focused on preparing for his likely conviction. The consequences of killing two people aren’t usually enjoyable, but odds are, he probably would have remained largely unknown outside of the Bay Area. Instead, he had the audacity to sue the family of the people he killed with his car, and in doing so, drew the attention of national media. As a result, far more people know King Vanga killed Pamela and Joe Juarez with his car in 2021.
It isn’t clear when King Vanga’s criminal trial will begin, but hopefully, it doesn’t take too much longer. He deserves to face the consequences for what he did, whether he was under the influence at the time of the crash or not.
