Sunny Hostin defends DA’s 2024 decision in Cornell fraternity case, criticizes coverage

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, a former prosecutor, said Tuesday that media coverage of the Cornell University fraternity case is inaccurate and unfair, arguing that no prosecutor could have brought charges in 2024 based on the accuser’s first account to police.

Hostin made the remarks on ABC’s daytime talk show a day after Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten announced he was reopening the investigation. She said the seven men accused have not been charged or adjudicated, yet their photos are being spread across the internet. The comments were also covered by Breitbart. 

“The pictures of these young men who have not been charged, not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet,” Ms. Hostin said. “I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they’re reporting it unfairly. And while this is something that we have to take very seriously, there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought forth a case.”

In Hostin’s reading of New York law, voluntary intoxication that merely impairs judgment does not amount to a legal inability to consent. She said the woman’s 2024 statement described agreeing to two threesomes. Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said Hostin was right about the law but argued the law itself is the problem.

The case centers on a civil lawsuit filed Sept. 16 by a woman identified only as Jane Doe. She alleges that seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity sexually assaulted her at the chapter house in October 2024 after she was pressured into using ketamine, marijuana and alcohol, and that she became incapacitated. She is suing the men, the fraternity, the university and an Ithaca bar. None of the men has been criminally charged.

Mr. Van Houten told ABC News the lawsuit’s allegations differ dramatically from the woman’s sworn statement to Cornell police, which he said did not claim she was drugged without her knowledge or forced into any act. He said he found her credible and plans to present the case to a grand jury. Her attorney, Thomas Giuffra, disputed the prosecutor’s description of the statement and said a group chat was given to authorities in 2024. Mr. Van Houten said his office never received it.

The Nov. 15, 2024, statement, according to a police report obtained by ABC News, includes more than her agreement to the initial encounters. ABC reported that she appeared to suggest some of the activity was consensual but also described declining certain acts proposed by the men, including a foursome. She wrote that during the final encounter she felt unable to make any decision because of her intoxication, which she put at about 8 on a 10-point scale, and that the encounters “felt like coercion.” Mr. Van Houten told ABC that she never withdrew her consent and that the men stopped when she raised concerns.

Text messages between the woman and one defendant, sent within days of the alleged assault, were reportedly obtained by CBS New York. Mr. Giuffra confirmed she exchanged messages with a defendant but said he could not be sure the screenshots were authentic, adding that she was incapacitated that night and was trying to learn what happened. An attorney for defendant Scott Kretzschmar has denied the allegations and said the incident did not happen. Cornell says it conducted its own Title IX investigation that led to expulsions and suspensions.