New York Attorney General Letitia James is now leading an active criminal investigation into the Cornell gang rape case after Governor Kathy Hochul removed the local district attorney and appointed James as special prosecutor. A special prosecutor is an outside attorney given full authority over a case when there are concerns the original prosecutor cannot handle it fairly.
“I know that you want answers, and I do too,” James said at a packed press conference in New York on Friday, adding that the process will be “guided by the facts and the law.” She cautioned that investigations like this take time.
Hochul signed the executive order Thursday night. It directs James to investigate the incident and, if the evidence supports it, present the case to a grand jury and prosecute.
The case centers on a former Cornell student who filed a civil lawsuit on September 16 under the name Jane Doe. She says she arrived intoxicated at the Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca in October 2024, where she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple members while she was incapacitated. Cornell University Police received her report in November 2024. A campus crime alert at the time said the victim reported being assaulted by several men and coerced into taking ketamine and other drugs.
During her interview with campus police, according to a transcript obtained by CBS News New York, she said, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”
Cornell ran its own Title IX investigation, the federal process schools must use to handle sexual misconduct complaints. That process is separate from a criminal case and cannot send anyone to jail. According to the lawsuit, the university suspended the seven accused students and the Chi Phi chapter, and two of the men were expelled. Cornell says a panel of trained faculty and staff issued a range of sanctions that included expulsions and suspensions.
No one was criminally charged. Cornell police sent a six page summary of the case to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who told ABC News the summary convinced him no crime had occurred. He acknowledged his office relied on the campus police work and did not independently investigate. He later said he never saw the transcript of the woman’s interview.
Van Houten also pointed to New York’s voluntary intoxication law. Under that law, a person who chose to drink or take drugs is generally treated as legally capable of consenting to sex, which makes it far harder to bring rape charges when the victim was intoxicated by choice. Laws like this exist across the country.
When the lawsuit went public, the Cornell gang rape allegations set off national outrage, and Van Houten responded by releasing parts of the woman’s sworn statement to defend his decision. “The foundation of the criminal justice system is that criminal prosecutions must be based upon evidence and not emotion,” he said.
The backlash kept building. On Monday, September 28, Van Houten announced he was reopening the investigation and would take it to a grand jury. By Wednesday, Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff had agreed to Hochul’s demand that the university hire outside counsel for an independent review of how it handled the case. By Thursday, the case was out of Van Houten’s hands entirely.
At Friday’s press conference, Hochul did not hold back. She said the system failed Jane Doe at every level, starting with campus police sending only a partial record to the district attorney.
“In what world does the district attorney not even interview her or anyone else involved or even request the full transcript?” Hochul asked. She said Van Houten did not do the “bare minimum.”
“I will not allow anyone to sweep this case under the rug,” the governor said. She also said the Cornell gang rape case exposed “a gap in state law,” a reference to the voluntary intoxication rule.
Jane Doe’s attorney said they had planned to formally request a special prosecutor the next morning because they had “zero confidence” in Van Houten’s ability to prosecute the case.
Cornell says it supports James taking over, backs efforts to change New York’s rape law, and is committed to an outside review of its own handling. The university has also said the allegations now being made publicly differ in significant ways from the accounts given during its Title IX investigation and do not reflect the complete record.
The fallout has reached beyond Ithaca. Nancy Pelosi canceled a scheduled event at Cornell as the investigation intensified.
None of the seven men have been charged with a crime, and their names have not been made public by prosecutors. What happens next is now up to James, who has the authority to bring the Cornell gang rape case before a grand jury and seek indictments if her office finds the evidence to support them.
