New York Governor Kathy Hochul has removed the Tompkins County district attorney from the investigation into an alleged sexual assault involving seven male Cornell University students and appointed State Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor.
Hochul issued the executive order on Thursday night after saying the woman who made the complaint had been failed by the handling of her case. The alleged assault took place at the Chi Phi fraternity on Cornell’s campus in October 2024. The woman, identified as Jane Doe in legal documents, alleges that fraternity members raped her while she was intoxicated.
At a news conference on Friday, Hochul said she was “deeply disturbed” by the way the matter had been handled and said she had lost faith in the local prosecutor’s ability to oversee it. James will now investigate the allegation and may prosecute offences and present evidence to a criminal grand jury if warranted.
The governor criticised Cornell police for leaving out the woman’s explicit statement that she had been raped from the sworn account provided to prosecutors. Hochul also questioned why the office of Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, did not interview the woman directly or obtain the full transcript of her police interview.
Van Houten’s office decided in 2024 against bringing criminal charges. He said the sworn statement police supplied did not contain allegations that rose to the level of a crime under state law. His office did not conduct its own interview with the accuser and did not review the complete police interview transcript. It also did not have a 120-page transcript from 2024 in the case.
Van Houten said he had been reopening the investigation before Hochul’s order. That work will now be conducted by James’s office. In a statement supporting the change, he said: “It has become clear that we were not provided the full picture by the University.” He said his office would cooperate with the attorney general’s investigation.
The case returned to public attention after Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit against the Ivy League university in September 2026. The suit alleges that she was too incapacitated to consent. Cornell provided material from its own investigation to the district attorney’s office, including a Snapchat group chat in which fraternity members discussed a “free” sexual encounter with the woman on the night of the alleged assault.
Those allegations have not resulted in criminal charges. It remains unknown whether James will bring charges or how long the state investigation will take.
New York law makes sexual assault cases harder to prosecute when an alleged victim voluntarily consumed alcohol or drugs. It treats those cases differently from cases in which a person was given an intoxicating substance without consent.
Hochul said she would work with the state legislature to change the law and remove that distinction. State assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz first sponsored legislation to close the intoxication loophole in 2019. Dinowitz said around half of US states have already adopted laws making no distinction between voluntary and involuntary intoxication in rape cases.
Hochul said she would support the existing bill and that it could advance as early as the next legislative session, which reconvenes in January.
James said: “Every New Yorker deserves to know that when they report a crime, it will be investigated fully and fairly.” She added: “The Governor has entrusted my office with this investigation, and we do not take that responsibility lightly.” James said a comprehensive investigation would take time and that her office was committed to gathering evidence and conducting interviews.
Cornell said it supported an investigation that would bring the case before a criminal grand jury. Thomas Giuffra, the woman’s lawyer, endorsed James’s appointment and said he had little faith in the local prosecutors’ handling of the matter.
Giuffra told CNN on Friday that his client is “not doing well” and is “under siege on social media, where people are trying to identify her.”
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