What New Yorks Rape Laws Mean for the Cornell Case

A New York prosecutor has blamed the state’s rape laws in part for his decision not to charge Cornell University students who were accused of sexually assaulting a 20-year-old woman in 2024.Those laws make it much more difficult to charge people with rape if the accuser chose to become intoxicated, according to prosecutors and advocates for sexual assault victims.For years, legislators have tried to change the law so that prosecutors could bring sexual assault charges in cases where a person had sex with someone who was clearly incapacitated and unable to control or understand their behavior.The case of the young woman who said she was sexually assaulted by the students at their fraternity in Ithaca, N.Y., has renewed calls for that legislation to pass.Here is what to know about the state’s rape laws.What does the law say about voluntary intoxication?In New York, accusers who chose to drink or take drugs have a high burden of proving they were unable to consent, according to prosecutors.The way the law is written now, people who were voluntarily intoxicated cannot claim they were mentally incapacitated during an assault, unless they can show they were physically helpless.This means that they had to be unconscious or physically unable to communicate consent at the time of the act.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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