Hochul taps NY attorney general in Cornell fraternity rape case review

Kathy Hochul has put New York Attorney General Letitia James in charge of the Cornell rape allegation case. The move reflects mounting doubts over the original inquiry and prosecution decision.

In Short

• Governor cited fresh doubts over campus police findings and prosecutors' judgment
• Attorney general may present evidence to a grand jury if needed
• Records show the complainant's account evolved after texts and campus rumours

New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Thursday appointed the office of Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to oversee an investigation into a woman's allegation that she was raped at a Cornell University fraternity house in October 2024. Hochul said she had lost faith in the local district attorney's ability to handle the case.

Announcing the move, Hochul said newly released information had raised questions about the Cornell Police Department's investigation and the decision by the Tompkins County District Attorney not to prosecute. The case has drawn attention on the Ivy League campus and raised questions about why no criminal case was brought.

Hochul said the attorney general would oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury. "Newly released information continues to raise serious questions about the investigation conducted by the Cornell Police Department and the decision by the Tompkins County District Attorney not to prosecute an alleged sexual assault on Cornell University's campus in October 2024," she said. "This has, in turn, undercut my faith, and the public's faith, in the District Attorney's ability to effectively investigate and prosecute the case at this time." She added: "The young woman at the centre of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued. This action will ensure that the matter is fully and thoroughly investigated without conflict or bias, and handled independently with the rigor that this matter demands."

According to a New York Times report citing records from the university's private investigation, the documents traced the woman's shift from seeing the alleged encounter as a humiliating episode to viewing it as sexual assault. The newspaper said that after the October 19, 2024 party at the Chi Phi fraternity house, the woman returned to her room and told her roommates she had taken ketamine, a powerful anaesthetic sometimes used as a party drug, and had sex with multiple men. The roommates said she did not describe it as rape or assault at that stage, but one roommate said: "I don't really remember her ever kind of citing that she had said yes to anything that occurred."

The following day, one of the men later named in her sexual assault lawsuit sent her a text saying he "just wanted to apologise for how things went down the other night" and regretted that he and another fraternity brother, also now a defendant in the lawsuit, had been too intoxicated to "shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand". She replied that "at the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal" and that she had liked being with the two men.

By October 23, 2024, the report said, she had become distressed that details of the episode were spreading on campus. She later saw an online forum post about campus Greek life that said Chi Phi brothers had gang raped a sophomore and should be reported. "That's the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn't a whore and that I was assaulted," she later told investigators. In the days that followed, her messages to the first brother became more aggrieved, including: "how could you let this happen?" Even so, she planned to attend the fraternity's Halloween party until she was disinvited.

On November 3, 2024, she texted the man: "let's be clear that 90 per cent of what happened that night was not consensual," adding that she had been given a lot of ketamine. She wrote that although her memories were patchy, they included a humiliating, drug-laced sexual act. "I know that i told u i felt uncomfortable and i didn't know anyone in the room," she added. Five days later, she went to Cornell campus police and spoke to them again on November 14 and 15, 2024. According to CBS New York, which said it obtained a transcript of her police interview, she told officers: "I can say with 100 per cent confidence I was raped."

The governor's decision transfers oversight of the case to the attorney general's office, with the option of presenting evidence to a grand jury if warranted. The case centres on the woman's allegation, the questions raised about the original investigation, and the series of messages and statements that documented how she came to describe the episode as rape.

With PTI Inputs

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