Letitia James takes over Cornell rape investigation after Hochul removes local prosecutor
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Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed the New York attorney general special prosecutor after saying she no longer trusted the local district attorney to oversee the case.
Two years after a Cornell student’s rape allegations were closed without charges, New York’s governor decided the local prosecutor could no longer be trusted with them.
The New York Times reported that Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order Thursday appointing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor over the case, removing Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten from an investigation he had reopened only days earlier.
Hochul said newly released information raised serious questions about both the Cornell Police Department’s handling of the matter and the decision not to prosecute.
The underlying allegations date to October 2024, when a woman says she was drugged and assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell. The investigation closed without charges. She filed a civil lawsuit last month, which reopened public scrutiny and prompted Van Houten to revisit it.
What likely sealed his removal was his own account. In an interview with ABC News, Van Houten acknowledged that his office relied on the investigation conducted by Cornell Police and had not independently investigated the allegations.
That admission drew sustained criticism that he abandoned the case prematurely, and Hochul said plainly she had lost confidence in his ability to oversee it fairly.
James said her office is prepared to lead a process New Yorkers can trust, guided by the facts and the law, adding that the responsibility is one she does not take lightly.
The accuser’s attorney said he had intended to write to Hochul requesting exactly this outcome, and that he and his client look forward to working with James to obtain justice.
Pressure has been building on several fronts simultaneously. Cornell agreed Wednesday to launch an independent review of how it handled the allegations, and unsealed documents detailing the original investigation surfaced the same week, adding to the volume of material now available for scrutiny.
The case has also pushed New York’s consent statutes into public debate, as the particulars of what investigators knew and when have become clearer.
James has served as attorney general since 2019 and is currently seeking a third term, making the assignment significant beyond the case itself. She inherits a matter where the central question has expanded well past the fraternity house. It now includes why a campus police investigation satisfied a district attorney, and how an allegation of this severity moved from complaint to closure without an independent look from the office responsible for charging decisions.