James to investigate 2024 allegations, prosecute any offenses found
Hochul announced the appointment in an executive order on Thursday, handing James the case from Van Houten, who has faced mounting criticism over his office’s initial handling of the woman’s allegations. “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,” Hochul said in a statement. “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,” the governor added.
The accuser, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, alleges she was drugged and gang-raped for hours by seven members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity overnight Oct. 19-20, 2024. Police were informed following the incident, but no charges were brought against any of the men allegedly involved. The allegations were made public in November 2024, but additional details only became public last month in a civil lawsuit filed by the woman seeking compensatory and punitive damages from Cornell and her alleged attackers.
Since the lawsuit was filed on Sept. 16, the Ithaca, N.Y., Ivy League school and local law enforcement have faced mounting public anger over perceived failures to adequately respond to the woman’s allegations. Amid the backlash, Van Houten announced he was reopening the case. He has defended his office’s initial decision not to prosecute on the grounds that the woman did not allege in her initial sworn statement “that she was drugged against her will or gang-raped.”
Hochul’s executive order takes a different view. The order states that Van Houten declined to prosecute without speaking to Jane Doe and relied, at least in part, on information from her sworn statement to the Cornell University Police Department, which “reportedly omitted key portions of her account, including her ‘unequivocal assertion that she had been sexually assaulted.’”
James, the state’s attorney general, said her office does not take the responsibility entrusted to her by the governor lightly. “I stand ready to lead a process guided by the facts and the law,” she said in a statement. Under the order, James will investigate the allegations and, if warranted, prosecute any offenses her office discovers.
Hochul said “the young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued.” The governor’s naming of James as special prosecutor is the latest action she has taken since the September lawsuit. She has also called for an independent, third-party investigation of Cornell’s response to the allegations, which the university said Wednesday it has agreed to.