This article is something I decided to write due to the recent explosion of the events at Cornell. While I don't land on any side and won't until all the facts are out, its fascinating to see how people have so dug their heels in without really knowing anything

What we actually know about Cornell

Here's the timeline, minus the opinions. In November 2024, Cornell police put out a crime alert saying a student reported being sexually assaulted by several men at a fraternity and pressured into taking ketamine and other drugs. The fraternity was suspended. Nobody was criminally charged.

Then, in September 2026, the woman, identified as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit against Cornell and 7 men. The Cornell Daily Sun reported it, and within days it was on CBS, The Independent and People. That is the journalistic equivalent of a kid's lemonade stand getting acquired by Coca-Cola over a long weekend.

And as the story traveled, it picked up passengers. The big one: a viral claim that the accused only had to write essays as punishment. Cornell says that's false and that sanctions included expulsions and suspensions. So already, one of the most shared "facts" in the case is, at best, unconfirmed.

Now watch the responsible people. 

Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten first defended not charging anyone, releasing a summary of Doe's 2024 statement to police and saying the lawsuit's allegations were "dramatically different" from it. In the same breath, he said he found her credible, admitted his office never independently investigated, and said a key group chat screenshot was never handed to him. Doe's attorney disputes his description of her statement entirely. Several of the accused, through lawyers, deny it. Then the DA reopened the case. Then Governor Kathy Hochul called it a botched investigation and handed it to Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor. Then Cornell, which had spent days defending itself, agreed to an outside independent probe.

That's a lot of people reversing course in two weeks. But who knows what actually happened? Statements are reversed, closed cases are reopened, but we're a society that believes innocent until proven guilty right? And if not, at least the people trying the case will have an open mind, right? RIGHT?

Wait, she already picked a side?

Here's the part that's factually nuts. On September 28, New York Attorney General Letitia James posted on X that what the young woman was "forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable," added that she was holding her in her heart and prayers, and told her and all survivors "we stand with you." That post got over 300,000 views.

Three days later, on October 1, Governor Hochul signed an executive order making James the special prosecutor on the exact same case. Hochul said she'd lost faith in the local DA, and that the young woman deserves to know every fact will be examined.

So let's get this straight. The person now in charge of deciding whether a crime happened publicly described what happened as horrific before she had the case file. Isn't there a kind of biased that we've learned not to do? And like if this was ANY other situation wouldn't we find a problem with it?

The American Bar Association's model rule on prosecutors, which many states base their ethics codes on, tells prosecutors to avoid public comments likely to heighten condemnation of the accused unless the comment serves a legitimate law enforcement purpose. To be fair to James: when she posted, she wasn't the prosecutor yet. Her post didn't name or accuse any of the men. And once appointed, she said her office would run a process New Yorkers can trust, guided by the facts and the law. Expressing sympathy for someone who reports an assault is not the same thing as convicting the people she accused.

But "horrific" is a conclusion. You don't call something horrific and then go find out if it happened. And it hasn't helped that the case is already getting dragged into national politics: President Trump said the accused men won't get a fair shake with James, though he appeared unfamiliar with the case itself. But also Trump has beef with James so like I wouldn't trust James to be an unbiased person to try the case, I also wouldn't trust Trump to give unbiased thoughts on James.

But is there a good way to resolve this? Yes, the Duke situation. There the state attorney general, Roy Cooper, came in cold, looked at the evidence and declared the players innocent. The whole point of handing a case to the AG is that the AG is supposed to be the adult in the room who hasn't made up their mind. In this case, the adult already is biased, but hopefully they don't only look at the facts that confirms their posted opinion.

But like what if everybody was wasted?

Glenn Greenwald asked the question that makes every TV panel suddenly need to go to commercial. If a man and a woman both choose to get drunk and high and then have sex, is the man guilty of rape, or is the woman guilty of rape, or both, or neither? And if the man is the wasted one and the woman is sober, is she the rapist?

It's a real question, and the answer is sitting right there in the statute, which almost nobody yelling about this has apparently read. Let's fix that. Under New York Penal Law § 130.05, every sex offense requires lack of consent, and lack of consent comes from forcible compulsion, incapacity to consent, or (for some charges) the victim clearly saying no in a way a reasonable person would understand. Someone is incapable of consent if they're "mentally incapacitated" or "physically helpless." And § 130.00 defines "mentally incapacitated" as being knocked out of your judgment by a substance given to you without your consent. "Physically helpless" means unconscious or otherwise unable to communicate unwillingness, and that one doesn't care how you got there.

Put simply, there is no law in New York that says choosing to drink means you consented to sex. Nobody wrote "open bar = open season" into the penal code. What the law says is narrower: voluntarily getting drunk or high, by itself, doesn't make you legally incapable of consenting. If you're passed out, it's rape. If someone forces you, it's rape. If you clearly say no, it's a crime. If you chose to party and you're conscious and saying yes, the law treats that as a yes. That applies to both people in the room. That's the rule the Tompkins County DA leaned on when he declined to charge, saying Jane Doe's 2024 statement described her drug use and the sex as voluntary.

Now Hochul wants to change it. On Friday she backed closing what advocates have branded the "voluntary intoxication loophole," saying "Voluntary intoxication is not a license for sexual assault or gang rape, period." Which is true and also not something current law says. The bill that's been stuck would ask whether a reasonable person in the defendant's position should have known the other person was too far gone to consent.

The deeper thing here and the question Greenwald is really asking is whether any prosecutor in America would actually bring a case against a woman who took advantage of an impaired man. That's a fair one. Ask yourself how many press conferences you've seen about that scenario and if a guy said this would you even believe them?

Duke, 2006: the case that should have taught us everything

In March 2006, Crystal Mangum accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a team party. Durham DA Mike Nifong went on a media tour, calling the players "a bunch of hooligans" before the evidence was in. The coach was forced to resign and Duke suspended the season. Eighty-eight Duke professors signed a full-page ad in the campus paper, and just days after it ran, DNA results came back with no match to any player.

In April 2007, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper did something prosecutors basically never do: he declared the three players innocent, called Nifong a rogue prosecutor, and described the whole thing as a "tragic rush to accuse." Nifong was disbarred and spent a day in jail. Not a fair punishment for blowing up three lives. 

And what happened to Crystal? Well she was sent to jail for an unrelated matter. In 2013, she was convicted of second-degree murder for stabbing her boyfriend, Reginald Daye, who died 10 days later. She got 14 to 18 years. In 2024 while in prison Crystal finally admitted she "made up a story that wasn't true". 

It took 18 years for her to admit making it up, but took America all of 18 minutes to convict them.

The Hall of "Oops"

Duke isn't a one-off. It's a franchise.

Rolling Stone and UVA, 2014. The magazine published a story about a fraternity gang rape. UVA suspended every fraternity on campus. Police later found no evidence the assault occurred, a Columbia Journalism School review called the story a journalistic failure, and Rolling Stone retracted it in April 2015. A UVA dean portrayed in the piece won $3 million in a defamation verdict. Every fraternity got suspended over a story that fell apart in weeks.

Brian Banks, 2002. Sixteen-year-old football star, committed to USC, accused of rape by a classmate. Facing up to 41 years to life, he took a plea. His own lawyer told him a jury would see a big Black teenager and automatically assume he was guilty. He served five years. Then his accuser friend-requested him on Facebook and admitted on tape that it never happened, and he was exonerated in May 2012. Her family had collected a settlement from the school district over the claim; she was later ordered to pay back $2.6 million.

Johnny Depp, 2020 to 2022. Depp lost a UK libel case against a tabloid that called him a wife beater, and Warner Bros. asked him to leave the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Two years later, a Virginia jury found Amber Heard defamed him, with actual malice, awarding him over $10 million.

The double standard nobody wants to say out loud (so we'll say it)

Look at that list again. Duke suspended a season. UVA suspended an entire Greek system. Brian Banks' own lawyer told him the presumption of guilt was baked in before he walked into court. Warner Bros. moved before the American trial. In case after case where a man was the accused, the institutions, the media and the public moved first and asked questions later. "Believe the accuser" was the default setting. Due process was the optional add-on nobody bought.

And when the facts did come in and went the other way? The reaction often wasn't "we got that wrong," it was "what does this mean for everyone else?" After the Depp verdict, Heard said she was even more disappointed by what it meant for other women. That's an understandable feeling. It's also a pretty good illustration of how these cases get turned into referendums on entire genders instead of disputes between specific people with specific evidence. When the accused is a man, he's a symbol. When the evidence clears him, suddenly we're told the case is "complicated" and we should be careful about drawing big conclusions. Funny how the caution only shows up at the end.