Cornell Gang Rape Allegation Renews Calls To Eliminate New York’s ‘Voluntary Intoxication Loophole’

An allegation of gang rape at Cornell University is reviving concerns about a provision of New York’s penal code that currently makes it difficult to prosecute an alleged assailant if the victim was voluntarily intoxicated. On Monday, the Tompkins County district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, announced that he is reopening an investigation into an alleged gang rape at Cornell. That announcement came roughly two weeks after a former student, identified as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit in which she alleged she was drugged and raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024. Mr. Van Houten said his office initially declined to bring criminal charges because the woman did not allege that she was involuntarily drugged or that she declined to give her consent to engage in sexual activities. An attorney for the plaintiff, Thomas P. Giuffra, has disputed the district attorney’s description of Jane Doe’s statements.The allegations have drawn the attention of high-profile public figures, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who denounced what she called a “culture of rape.” The lawsuit has also brought renewed calls to close what advocates for sexual assault victims say is a loophole in New York law that makes it difficult to prosecute cases where the victim was voluntarily intoxicated.On Monday, a New York assemblyman who is spearheading the push to change the law, Jeffrey Dinowitz, shared an article about the Cornell rape allegations on X, and wrote, “In New York voluntary use of alcohol or drugs shouldn’t be treated as consent to sexual assault. We must pass A.101, which would close the voluntary intoxication exclusion and give sexual assault survivors justice.”Under current law, it is illegal to have sex with an individual who was drugged or intoxicated without their knowledge. However, the law does not allow individuals who were voluntarily intoxicated to claim that they were “mentally incapacitated” and therefore unable to provide consent. Roughly two dozen states have passed laws that eliminate that loophole. Advocates for sexual assault victims have been trying for years to change the law in New York to eliminate what they call the “voluntary intoxication loophole.” Assembly bill A101 would allow prosecutors to bring sex crime charges in “cases where the victim had become voluntarily intoxicated if a reasonable person in the defendant’s position should have known that the victim was incapable of giving consent due to intoxication.”An anti-sexual violence advocacy organization, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, has been pushing New York lawmakers to change the law. In a statement, the vice president for public policy at RAINN, Stefan Turkheimer, said, “The decision to drink does not equal consent to sex. It’s really a no-brainer to provide survivors who experience an assault while voluntarily incapacitated the same access to prosecute these crimes as other survivors.”The policy director for Safe Horizon, Jimmy Meagher, said that the loophole “too often denies justice and healing to survivors of sexual violence and blames them for their own assault.”The proposed legislation to close the “voluntary intoxication loophole” has repeatedly stalled in the Assembly, though it has repeatedly passed the state Senate. Opponents of the legislation argue that existing law already covers such cases. In a June 2024 statement, a coalition of legal defense organizations — including the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the New York County Defender Services, and the Chief Defenders Association of New York — came out in opposition to the push to close the “loophole,” noting that New York law “already protects against non-consensual sex,including where intoxication results in a person being unable to give consent to engage in sex.”The defense lawyers argued that the proposed legislation would “create a situation where a person would be made responsible for determining the future state of mind of their intended sexual partner.”“Their partner may be consenting in the moment, but may later feel that they were too intoxicated to have adequately appraised their own conduct. It would be nearly impossible for a partner to make that kind of distinction,” the lawyers said. Mr. Dinowitz told the Bronx-based Norwood News in January that left-wing members of the legislature have opposed the bill due to concerns that people of color will be disproportionately targeted for prosecution. He said those concerns stem from national incarceration rates for people of color.However, Mr. Dinowitz said statistics show that in “states who have similar laws, that this has worked incredibly well, that more people have received justice.”While advocates push for the legislature to close the loophole, it is unclear whether the Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, will put the bill up for a vote. Mr. Heastie has previously declined to move the bill to the floor for a full vote but has declined to comment publicly on the legislation.

Cornell Gang Rape Allegation Renews Calls To Eliminate New York’s ‘Voluntary Intoxication Loophole’

Cornell Gang Rape Allegation Renews Calls To Eliminate New York’s ‘Voluntary Intoxication Loophole’

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