New York governor to provide update on Cornell gang-rape case after appointing special prosecutor
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has named New York attorney general Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate an alleged gang-rape at Cornell University in 2024, saying she had lost faith in the local district attorney’s ability to handle the case.
Both Hochul and James are due to speak today to provide an update on the investigation following the attorney general’s appointment.
Hochul said newly released information raised questions about the investigation conducted by Cornell police and the decision by Tompkins County prosecutors not to file charges.
“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 said in a statement.
James will oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury, Hochul added.
New York state attorney general Letitia James has been appointed as special prosecutor to look into an alleged gang-rape at Cornell University. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, declined at the time of the alleged assault to file charges, saying his office chose not to prosecute because the victim’s testimony did not establish a lack of consent.
But with renewed attention on the case and mounting public pressure, Van Houten said on Monday that his office would reopen the investigation.
A woman, known as Jane Doe in court documents, filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging she had been drugged with ketamine and raped by a group of men at a fraternity house near Cornell University’s campus in October 2024. She reported the incident to the Cornell University police department several weeks later, but no criminal charges were filed.
James said her office would “fully and fairly” investigate the allegations.
You can read our latest report on this story here:
In other news:
Donald Trump is heading to Alabama today as part of his near month-long midterm campaign blitz. He began the 32-day tour yesterday in safe Republican territory, starting with Texas and Oklahoma and continuing to Ohio this weekend and Nebraska on Monday. The US president is expected to campaign almost daily ahead of November’s midterm elections, as the Republicans wrestle to retain its slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish its employment report today, with Reuters reporting that US job growth likely slowed in September while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% for a third month in a row.
Updated at 07.50 EDT
Key events
On Monday, following public outcry, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said his office would reopen the investigation into the Cornell case, nearly two years after the student victim of the alleged gang-rape gave a statement to police.
My colleagues Richard Luscombe and Maya Yang covered the story earlier this week. They wrote:
double quotation markAccording to lawyers for the student, who filed a civil lawsuit against the university and her alleged attackers earlier in September, only two members of the Chi Phi fraternity were expelled after the October 2024 incident, in which she said she was drugged and repeatedly raped over the course of seven hours.
None of the seven were arrested, they said, and the others were made to write essays, attend workshops or serve short suspensions.
On Monday, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins county district attorney, said his office was looking again at the case, after the woman, who was 20 at the time of the alleged assault, presented allegations in her lawsuit that were “dramatically different” from the statement she gave to police two years ago.
Later on Monday, Van Houten released a fuller statement defending his office’s past decision to not seek charges.
“While I generally refrain from commenting publicly on criminal investigations, the community outrage stemming from the incomplete news and social media coverage requires that I provide an answer to why the investigation resulted in a lack of criminal charges,” he said.
Read more:
ShareCalls grow for US death penalty halt after ‘torturous’ botched execution of Christa Pike
Ed Pilkington
Top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community are calling for a moratorium on the US death penalty after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike left the prisoner alive but in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care.
The recent spate of harrowingly botched executions across US death penalty states reached a new low late on Wednesday when Tennessee’s governor Bill Lee called off the procedure after Pike had been injected with two full syringes of pentobarbital. She is the only person to have survived being administered 5mg of the sedative – a massive dose that under normal circumstances is considered fatal.
Christa Pike pictured in court in Knoxville, Tennessee, in December 2007. Photograph: J Miles Cary/Reuters
An hour after the first injection was given, she was overheard by eyewitnesses to be still breathing, choking and struggling, and was found to have a heartbeat. Her lawyers said that her current condition, and the degree to which she may have been brain damaged through oxygen deprivation, were as yet unknown.
Sandra Babcock, a death penalty scholar at Cornell law school who advises Pike’s legal team, told the Guardian that the events that unfolded were “unimaginably barbaric. They demand accountability.”
Read more:
Updated at 07.50 EDT
Letitia James is no stranger to high profile investigations involving powerful individuals and institutions.
Her most prominent case in recent years was the civil fraud action against Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. In February 2024, a New York judge ruled in her favour and ordered Trump to pay a $450m penalty after finding he fraudulently overstated his net worth to dupe lenders. A five-judge panel tossed the financial penalty last year, but James’s office has appealed to reinstate it.
New York attorney general Letitia James speaking at a press conference at City Hall in New York City last month. Photograph: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
In this profile of James in February 2024, Guardian US reporter Lauren Aratani wrote:
double quotation markRaised in Brooklyn with her seven siblings, James attended public schools before getting her law degree at Howard University in Washington DC. She rose through the ranks as a public defender before entering New York politics as a councilmember and then as public advocate, the first Black woman to hold the watchdog role and one where she filed a record number of suits on behalf of people with disabilities, seniors and tenants.
When she won the attorney general’s office, another first for a Black woman, James vowed to “take that power back” from corporations and corrupt politicians.
“The law is the great equalizer and the biggest pillar of our democracy,” she said in her inaugural speech in 2019. “I will shine a light into the murkiest of swamps and act as a steward of justice.”
The profile is more than two years old but still worth a read for useful background on James’s career and her involvement in several of the big cases that have defined her tenure as attorney general.
Updated at 07.12 EDT
New York governor to provide update on Cornell gang-rape case after appointing special prosecutor
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has named New York attorney general Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate an alleged gang-rape at Cornell University in 2024, saying she had lost faith in the local district attorney’s ability to handle the case.
Both Hochul and James are due to speak today to provide an update on the investigation following the attorney general’s appointment.
Hochul said newly released information raised questions about the investigation conducted by Cornell police and the decision by Tompkins County prosecutors not to file charges.
“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 said in a statement.
James will oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury, Hochul added.
New York state attorney general Letitia James has been appointed as special prosecutor to look into an alleged gang-rape at Cornell University. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, declined at the time of the alleged assault to file charges, saying his office chose not to prosecute because the victim’s testimony did not establish a lack of consent.
But with renewed attention on the case and mounting public pressure, Van Houten said on Monday that his office would reopen the investigation.
A woman, known as Jane Doe in court documents, filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging she had been drugged with ketamine and raped by a group of men at a fraternity house near Cornell University’s campus in October 2024. She reported the incident to the Cornell University police department several weeks later, but no criminal charges were filed.
James said her office would “fully and fairly” investigate the allegations.
You can read our latest report on this story here:
In other news:
Donald Trump is heading to Alabama today as part of his near month-long midterm campaign blitz. He began the 32-day tour yesterday in safe Republican territory, starting with Texas and Oklahoma and continuing to Ohio this weekend and Nebraska on Monday. The US president is expected to campaign almost daily ahead of November’s midterm elections, as the Republicans wrestle to retain its slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish its employment report today, with Reuters reporting that US job growth likely slowed in September while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% for a third month in a row.
Updated at 07.50 EDT