NY AG Appears to Pre-Judge the Cornell Seven Rape Case Before Being Tapped as Special Prosecutor

New York Attorney General Letitia James seemed to believe the alleged perpetrators in the “Cornell seven” sexual assault case were guilty before she was ever assigned to serve as a special prosecutor on the case.

“What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable,” James wrote in a post on social media earlier this week, in response to a New York Times article about the reopening of the investigation into the alleged 2024 gang rape by seven members of a Cornell fraternity.

“I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her, and to all survivors: you’re not alone. We stand with you,” she added.

Days later, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed James as a special prosecutor to oversee the case.

“New information has raised serious questions about how this case was handled, and I’ve lost faith in the Tompkins County DA’s ability to fairly oversee it,” Hochul said.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said no criminal charges were brought because the alleged victim, who has not been publicly identified, provided a detailed written statement at the time saying that she consented to the sexual activities. Other questions remain about the case, which went viral this month when Jane Doe filed a civil suit in Manhattan seeking money damages from Cornell, the bar that served her, and the national organizations of the fraternity and her own sorority. Some reporting suggests that she was embarrassed after the incident and was convinced by her roommate that the interaction should be treated as a rape. 

That James seemed to assume guilt in light of the mixed evidence led critics to question whether her appointment as special prosecutor was appropriate.

James and Hochul were pressed on the AG’s social media comments during a press conference on Friday.

“Why did you affirm her allegations as fact without doing your own fact-finding investigation?” a reporter asked James. “And to the governor, why did you appoint an official who made a public statement affirming those allegations as fact as someone who’s supposed to be doing an investigation?” 

Hochul replied: “I have every confidence in our attorney general to do what she has always done. Look at the facts, examine the record, and draw the proper conclusions. That’s exactly what’s going to happen in this case.”

James said she “will not comment on a Facebook post.”

Legal ethics experts tell NR the optics of the post may be bad, but it was not clear that James had violated any formal ethical rules. 

“[I]t’s not necessarily a conflict of interest as we understand them under the rules of professional conduct,” said Leslie Levin, University of Connecticut professor of law emerita. “It also doesn’t obviously violate any of the other rules of professional conduct if she feels that she can fairly evaluate the evidence,”

“Now that Letitia James has been appointed, she does have an obligation not to make certain kinds of statements to the public about the case,” Levin added.

Stephen Gillers, NYU professor of law emeritus, agreed. 

“Prosecutors are not like judges,” he said. “They are not expected to be neutral. They are advocates who are charged [to] prosecute crime.”

While prosecutors may not make certain statements before trial because they will prejudice the public against a person who may be charged, Gillers argues James is “not accusing anyone in particular of a crime” in this case.

“She is sympathizing with the complaining witness’s pain based on the public facts. If and when there is a criminal charge, she will have to prove guilt based on admissible evidence,” he said.

Keith Fisher, law professor at St. Thomas University and the former director of the Institute for Ethics and Professionalism at the National Judicial College, similarly said there is “nothing unethical” about a prosecutor making statements that are biased, because they are advocates, not judges.

However, in James’s case, her comments came before her own investigation had even begun. “While it’s not necessarily an ethical problem, it certainly is a denial of due process potentially.”

“In other words, if they’re at a stage where they’re conducting an honest to goodness criminal investigation, then none of the people who are being investigated should be treated as though they’ve already been convicted,” he said, saying James should “not rush to judgment” if she is going to conduct a fair, impartial investigation.

As NR’s Dan McLaughlin previously reported, most of what the public currently knows about the case is hearsay or speculation. However, the public has been shocked by the main piece of corroborating evidence in the case: a screenshot of the fraternity’s group chat on Snapchat, in which one of the defendants advertised “free p****” and another later asked, “shop still open?”

Van Houten has not publicly released Jane Doe’s statement in which she apparently said the events of that evening were consensual, but the DA has said she provided a detailed, six-page statement that his office found to be “thorough, it was comprehensive, it was candid — it said exactly everything that happened.”

The version of events as told in the unreleased statement to the DA does not meet the legal definition of first, second or third-degree rape in New York state.

The university conducted its own internal investigation that led to expulsions, suspensions and other sanctions. Cornell conducted at least twelve hearings on the case, according to Jane Doe’s lawsuit. The suit further alleges that after “temporary suspensions” were imposed, the seven men “were afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays to CORNELL.” The lawsuit accuses the university of “failing to discipline or remove the Student Defendants . . . from campus afterwards, all the while sheltering them from speaking to law enforcement, and silencing victims.”

Cornell said in a statement that is imposed “a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell.”

“None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement,” the university said. “In addition, the involved fraternity chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus. Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false.”