A USC student was charged with a violent crime he didn’t commit, and feels the university turned its back on him

Judah Adkins had an upbringing that sets him apart from many of his USC peers. He’s from Las Vegas and was raised by a single father. He was homeschooled his entire life. He’s Black and Hispanic and from a low-income background — but for the past two years, he’s found his community at the University of Southern California.

A cinema and media studies major, Adkins enjoys both the academic and social prestige that the university boasts. Those close to him describe him as a quiet yet social, soft-natured student, son, roommate and friend.

But Adkins carries a heavy burden on his shoulders that’s been weighing on him since his freshman year.

At the end of the 2022 spring semester, Adkins was suspended from USC after the LAPD wrongfully arrested him for a violent crime. As he recounted, “[It was] obviously just devastating, like, psychologically. I knew I was innocent but I was tricking myself into believing it was my fault because I put myself in that situation.”

Weeks later, once he was proven innocent and released from custody, USC eventually let him back on campus, but the path to reach his invitation back was fraught and left him feeling unsupported by his school. While USC won’t comment on his specific situation due to student privacy, a university spokesperson said “interim action safety measures” are often applied in situations like this one, and then “modified” when new information comes to light.

According to LAPD police reports, at roughly 9:30 p.m. on the night of April 29, 2022, an armed robbery took place in a parking lot off of Olive Street in Downtown L.A., roughly 2.5 miles northeast of USC’s University Park campus. Two individuals held a couple at gunpoint as their car was ransacked. After the suspects drove off with the stolen items, LAPD officers were eventually able to locate a car matching the description given by the couple on West 35th Street, just across the street from USC.

At the time of the initial crime, Adkins was in attendance at the “SC Choreographic Showcase” at Bing Theatre near the center of USC’s campus, evidenced by an electronic ticket receipt. He went with a small group to support a friend who was performing.

Adkins’ actions from that night were self-reported in a “False Arrest Victim Complaint Letter,” which was sent to Charles Zukowski, USC’s provost at the time.

According to this written timeline of events, after parting from the group he had attended the showcase with, Adkins met with friend Aivy Levan, a then-freshman majoring in biological sciences, and others at Birnkrant Residential College on the east side of campus at around 10 p.m. The group took a Lyft to a party at 3414 Catalina Street, arriving at roughly 11 p.m.

As written in Adkins’ statement, he left the party sometime after 1 a.m., and screenshots from the student’s phone log reviewed by Annenberg Media show a series of frantic calls and text messages to friends — including Levan — and family. A little after this time, Adkins explained that he noticed the growing sound of sirens and a helicopter.

Officers eventually arrived at Adkins’ location on Catalina Street, a couple streets over from where the suspects’ vehicle was found. “I tried explaining that I was a USC student simply walking home, but I had no human response from any of these officers,” Adkins said.

He was arrested at 1:50 a.m. the morning of April 30 by three LAPD officers. No body camera footage was ever released to the public or to Adkins and his family.

LAPD declined to comment directly on the situation, citing an internal investigation.

According to his arrest record, Adkins was charged with two felonies: aggravated robbery and the use of a firearm during the crime. These charges were the complete antithesis to who Adkins was — a star student with no criminal record.

Three minors were taken into custody as Adkins’ codefendants even though he had no relation to the individuals. According to court records, one co-defendant recently took a plea deal and pleaded no contest to Penal Code 245(a)(4): Assault by Means Likely to Produce Great Bodily Injury. Adkins’ co-defendants’ statuses as minors makes the progress of their cases difficult to track.

Booking records show that Adkins was detained at the LAPD Metropolitan Detention Center at 3:16 a.m. The young student described how he was transferred to and from court, Los Angeles Men’s County Jail, and Wayside Jail (also known as Pitchess Detention Center) until he was finally given a jail dorm at Wayside. He explained that he was “treated like a dog,” with phone calls and shoes withheld for four days and meals that were “burnt to the point of being inedible while being in a cell designed to torture the claustrophobic 24/7.”

“As day by day went on, I started to get more and more depressed and … suicidal,” he explained. “You’re literally in a stone room with bars, one toilet and 20 other guys.”

To friends and family, Adkins had seemingly vanished.

After four days, Adkins was allowed outside contact and called those close to him, including Tomás Manea, a current junior studying quantitative biology. Manea was a good friend, and had been a member of the group that Adkins had attended the SC Choreography Showcase with the night of his arrest.

Once permitted, Manea visited Adkins in jail.

After understanding what had transpired, Manea called the then-dean of Student Affairs, as well as officials within the Department of Public Safety at USC in order to try and figure out what role the school could play in aiding Adkins — whether that be legal, financial or psychological. His efforts seemingly fell on deaf ears.

“I called the dean and I was like, ‘Hey, one of your students, who is my close friend, was arrested. What can you do? Are there resources? Can we go to Gould?’ … They didn’t care,” Manea explained. “I got more advice from my law student friend than I did from the whole entire USC institute.”

Aivy Levan, as one of the friends who had also been with Adkins the night of his arrest, described how she chose to become involved in the defense of her friend, “I did go to … the pre-trial, and said if necessary, I would fly down to L.A. and take a stand or act as a witness.” Levan is from the Bay Area.

According to court records, Adkins’ bail was set to $150,000 after his arraignment on May 2, 2022. Recounting his primary reactions after this hearing, Adkins explained, “I hear[d] the story against me and then it definitely got to the point where I was like, yeah, it’s over. Everything that I worked for, that I’ve done … my life is over.”

Two days later, Judah’s father, Eric Adkins, was notified by USC via email that his son had been indefinitely suspended from the university.

As his father and sole caretaker, Eric Adkins recounted the horror he experienced combatting the allegations against his only child, “[When] you have a beautiful child and all of a sudden somebody comes and tells you something about your child [like that] … my son would not take a shotgun and put it to someone’s head … It’s just too inhumane. It’s just not him.”

With such a high bail and now academic suspension, Adkins, as well as his family, felt severe distress leading up to his preliminary hearing on May 16. Financial burdens were mounting through travel and legal fees on top of the bail request.

Unfortunately, Adkins would remain detained between Los Angeles County facilities for nearly two weeks.

The young student’s eventual exoneration would come by a rigorous investigation of his cell phone, which Adkins was lucky to have had on him the night of his arrest. According to the DA’s office and Adkins’ defense attorney Rob Pfeiffer, investigators looked at the student’s phone, examining applications like Life360 and other location trackers that showed that he was nowhere near the scene of the crime when it occurred.

After two miserable, restless and stressful weeks, Adkins was released on his own recognizance on May 11. Court-sanctioned “pretrial supervision” meant that the student had to wear an ankle monitor at all times, that he wasn’t to leave the area specified by this supervision, and that he was to report back to his preliminary hearing five days later. During his preliminary hearing on May 16, court transcripts show Adkins’ attorney objecting to the ankle monitor provision, explaining that it would prohibit Adkins from fulfilling summer plans he may have had such as internships and jobs as a college student. Those transcripts also show Judge Kevin S. Rosenberg acknowledging the difficulties that Adkins would face donning the device. Still, the provision was upheld as Adkins had been charged with a felony, and was therefore still considered a threat to society.

This hearing concluded that a formal court date was to be set for June 7, 2022.

At this point, however, the damage had already been done. Between jail time and USC’s suspension, Adkins had missed his last few weeks of freshman year, including all of his finals. He describes how the university never offered any academic compensation for this lost time. If it hadn’t been for his individual professors that he had contacted about his case, it was likely that he would have had to retake the entire semester — a major financial burden. Additionally, Adkins was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder at Silver State Health Services in Las Vegas soon after his release, with symptoms including sleep disturbances, hypervigilance, flashbacks and increased anxiety.

Upon release from jail on May 11, Adkins was immediately directed by USC to remove his belongings from his dorm at Cale & Irani Residential College. Escorted by DPS officers and a residential advisor in the middle of the day, he described the embarrassment and shame he felt as he was instructed to hastily remove all of his belongings in front of his peers, friends and roommates, all while wearing that ankle monitor. He described the situation as “a total nightmare.”

Tomás Manea, who stayed involved throughout the case, accused USC of a lack of support for Adkins during this time.

“A lot of [his friends] are not necessarily from the most resourced backgrounds, myself included,” Manea said.” So we had to find housing because we had to stay here… The school didn’t help with that.”

Manea offered to stay with Adkins until his dad was able to successfully petition to get his son back home, and the two resided at the Lorenzo, a non-USC affiliated off-campus apartment complex, with a friend for a short period. Afterwards, Adkins was finally able to return home to his dad, although the ankle monitor remained until prosecutors officially dropped the charges three weeks later.

Adkins’ father explained, “He was guilty until proven innocent. And to this day, he’s still marginalized…I don’t care what anyone says. I think he’s totally affected.”

Annenberg Media asked USC a series of questions about Adkins’ situation. The university declined an interview request but sent the following statement: “The university is deeply committed to the well-being of every student and does all it can to apply its policies in a compassionate and thoughtful manner. While we cannot discuss the specifics of individual cases due to federal student privacy laws, we believe the university acted appropriately in this matter based on the information available at the time. Interim action safety measures may be applied while we gather more information, and they are often modified or released as additional information comes to light.”

USC utilized Section 10.10(f)(i) of the student handbook in Adkins’ suspension, which states,

“In some cases, Interim Protective Measures [IPM] may be imposed when there is information that, if true, indicates the student poses a substantial threat: (i) to the safety or well-being of anyone in the university community…”

The forward of Section 10.10(f) explains that alterations to these parameters cannot be made without an initial review. An appeal was made by Adkins and his family on April 29, 2022.

On June 6, 2022, over a month after Adkins’ arrest and more than two weeks after his initial release from jail, the student’s suspension appeal was rejected following review. Part of his rejection reads,

“In your appeal, you raised concerns that the alleged conduct currently under review by SJACS and outside law enforcement involves a case of mistaken identity, specifically that you were falsely arrested and placed under investigation. You shared details of your activity the day in question, witnesses who could corroborate your activity and locations at the time of the alleged crime, and the significant negative effects the experience has had upon you.

As noted above, the sole basis for modifying an Interim Protective Measure during the appeal process is whether ‘less protective measures could adequately reduce or mitigate the threat.’ It is not the forum to explore the merits of the allegations made against you, nor is there any determination as to whether or not you engaged in prohibited conduct.

Based on my review of your appeal and the information relied upon by the Committee, I have concluded that in deciding to impose the Interim Suspension, the Committee appropriately conducted the safety and risk assessment required by Section 10.10(f)(i). The Committee specifically considered the factors set forth in that section and determined that Interim Suspension should be imposed to ensure the health and safety of the University community. Based on the foregoing, your appeal of the Interim Protective Measures is denied.”

Part of a letter sent on June 21, 2022 that finally allowed Adkins back onto USC’s campus from Daren Mooko, the interim vice provost for community expectations at the time of the incident reads,

“I acknowledge this has been an incredibly difficult process for you to go through. We are sorry you went through this, and as we discussed on the phone, our focus now is on how we can best support you and your return to campus.”

It wouldn’t be until weeks into the fall 2022 semester that USC would reach out to the students affected — including both Manea and Adkins. There was, however, an effort from one faculty member — Assistant Vice Provost of Student Affairs Daren Mooko — who tried to help Adkins reintegrate into student life and aid in providing mental health resources. But according to Adkins, it seems like he may have been the only one.

Even when the university reached out to Adkins and his circle of friends involved in the arrest, for some, it was rather distasteful.

“It was so, so late. And then on top of that, they were bombarding us. And mind you, this is a very sensitive topic. So for [them] to just willy nilly poke at it, it felt very disrespectful,” Manea said.

He continued by explaining the exasperation and betrayal he felt from the university at the time, “No, I don’t need your resources because where were your resources when we really needed them?”

Adkins’ father reiterated the lasting effect that the case had on the family, stating, “He had to come back and it was just a whole convoluted nightmare of just being excommunicated by every vestige that he had previously thought was a solid ground … And that was his life … USC got him out of there [with the] snap of a finger.”

“When I did talk to him over the summer … He didn’t want to go into tons of detail about it. It was more like what he would be willing to tell me,” Dace Roberts, Adkins’ close friend and sophomore-year roommate explained. “He doesn’t really bring it up himself.”

“The thing that scared me the most about his time incarcerated is that … it might have broken some of those natural qualities that he had,” said Professor Oliver Mayer, the director of dramatic writing at the School of Cinematic Arts, and Adkins’ playwriting professor during that fateful 2022 spring semester.

Adkins himself explained that he’s never been able to truly recover financially or psychologically from the events that transpired at the end of his freshman year. It’s a burden that he’ll likely carry for the rest of his life.

A GoFundMe is currently trying to monetarily compensate Adkins and his family for the months-long financial burden that they encountered a year ago. Working over the summer in a fast food restaurant and now working at USC, Adkins is still trying to pay off the debts accumulated throughout the whole ordeal, including travel costs as well as mental health treatment and legal fees. His tuition, even with financial aid, is still yet to be paid off.

As a final takeaway from the incident, Adkins states that his incarceration led him to think a lot about himself and his life. Along with his family and friends, he is hopeful that his USC community will provide some much-needed compensation and relief, since his university didn’t.

Disclosure: The author of this piece is Adkins’ friend, and organized the GoFundMe to help him.