I’ve held my tongue for a while, but being from Ithaca, a Cornell alum and a former criminal defense attorney, and seeing how out of hand this story has gotten, I am compelled to comment on the lawsuit alleging a gang rape at Cornell. I cannot purport to know what happened one night at a frat house in October 2024—any more than you can. However, here are a few basic principles much of the public appears not to understand. A lawsuit is a series of allegations made by the plaintiff. It is not proof. Allegations made in lawsuit turn out to be untrue all the time, either due to mistake, intentional misrepresentation, or flat-out lies. Unfortunately, people often misrepresent the truth in lawsuits due to monetary and other incentives. In the past, there have been instances of fabricated rape allegations. About a decade ago, Rolling Stone published a piece about an allegedly horrendous rape that occurred on the UVA campus that garnered similiar outrage to this incident and turned out to be entirely fabricated. I have read the DA’s press release and the lawsuit itself. According to the cited portions of Jane Doe’s statements to police shortly after the incident, crediting it as entirely true, there was simply no basis to charge the alleged perpetrators. Everyone involved was apparently extremely intoxicated. Jane Doe gave consent to the encounter at the beginning and does not explicitly recall any activity occurring after consent was withdrawn. It is possible that, due to her inability to recall, she had not given consent for some of the activity towards the end, but possible is not a basis for a district attorney to file criminal charges. Her current lawsuit is fairly consistent with her initial statement—except it omits the portions where she told the police she gave consent. Is she lying? Did she later remember something she didn’t initially? Is she mistaken? I do not know—and again, neither do you. What I do know is that if we are to live in a society of laws, going after the jobs and reputations young men who may have participated in an entirely consensual incident, and the DA who made the correct decision not to charge, is mindless mob justice. We actually want prosecutors to decline to seek indictments when there’s insufficient evidence of criminal wrongdoing. None of this is to say I approve of what happened as reported in the initial statement to police. That’s a cultural and parenting issue, though, not a matter for law enforcement. I encourage people to let the DA’s office handle the case going forward, and not to participate in the witch hunt against either the prosecutors involved or the young men who, as of now, have not been charged or shown to have committed any crime.