New York Attorney General Letitia James Named Special Prosecutor in Cornell Rape Case
By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order on Thursday appointing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the case of an alleged 2024 gang rape of a Cornell University student, saying newly surfaced information had shaken her confidence in how local authorities handled the matter.
The student filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging that several members of a campus fraternity drugged and assaulted her in 2024. Hochul said the release of new information raised questions about the Cornell Police Department’s investigation and the decision by Tompkins County prosecutors not to bring charges.
“I’ve lost faith in the Tompkins County DA’s ability to fairly oversee it,” Hochul said in a statement, referring to the case.
James said her office would investigate the allegations “fully and fairly.”
“The Governor has entrusted my office with this investigation, and we do not take that responsibility lightly,” James said.
The case has renewed scrutiny of how law enforcement and Cornell responded after the woman, then 20, reported the alleged assault to police a few weeks after it occurred. In recent days, new reports have provided a clearer picture of what investigators knew in 2024.
CBS New York obtained a transcript of the woman’s police interview, which contained far more detail than the sworn statement police ultimately provided to prosecutors, according to the network. The New York Times, citing more than 1,000 pages of Cornell’s internal investigation, reported that it took the woman time to determine that she had been gang-raped.
Her lawsuit names seven fraternity members, the Chi Phi fraternity, Cornell, a bar and her own sorority as defendants.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has acknowledged public anger over the authorities’ handling of the case. He said this week that his office had reopened it and would present evidence, including the woman’s testimony, to a grand jury for possible indictment.
Van Houten said his office initially declined to pursue charges against the accused students partly because of limits in state law. Experts and advocates say certain rape charges can be harder to bring in New York if the plaintiff consumed intoxicants before the alleged assault. Some lawmakers have called for revising the state’s sexual assault statutes to make prosecutions involving intoxicated victims easier.
The Times, citing Cornell internal documents, reported that the men denied wrongdoing and told school investigators the sex was consensual.
Cornell has defended its response, saying it launched a comprehensive investigation and barred the Chi Phi chapter from campus. The chapter remains closed. The university imposed discipline on fraternity members, including expulsions and other sanctions.
The interim executive director of the national Chi Phi fraternity, Trey Robb, said Wednesday that the Cornell chapter and the national organization had expelled members understood to have been involved in the incident.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sergio Non and Stephen Coates)