A Minnesota rape case that echoes Cornell scandal led to the closing of a legal ‘loophole’

Minnesota law once had the same loophole that helped shield fraternity members who are alleged to have raped a Cornell University student from prosecution.

But Minnesota closed that loophole after a notorious sexual assault case that shares similarities with the Cornell case sparked public outrage.

In both the Cornell and Minnesota cases, the defendants were protected from prosecution because of an exclusion making it difficult for victims to claim they were assaulted if they had voluntarily consumed alcohol or drugs beforehand.

The Minnesota case prompted the Legislature to change the law in 2021 to close the legal gap — a change that altered the prosecution of rape cases “pretty dramatically,” according to Jake Rice, a criminal defense attorney in St. Paul who has also worked as a prosecutor.

The state of New York, where Cornell University is located, is now looking to do the same.

According to court documents in the Minnesota case, in May of 2017 a 20-year-old woman consumed about five shots of vodka and one prescription narcotic. She went with friends to the Dinkytown neighborhood of Minneapolis but was denied entry to a bar by the bouncer because she was intoxicated.

That’s when Francios Khalil invited the woman and her friend to his house where he said there was a party. But there was no party and the woman said she blacked out and was raped.

Khalil was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct, but the Minnesota Supreme Court overturned that conviction in March of 2021 based on the “voluntary intoxication” distinction.

After that decision, the Legislature quickly moved to close that exclusion in rape law and also lifted the statute of limitation on rape cases. But the exclusion still exists in New York, which hindered the prosecution of the Cornell students accused of assault, and is on the books in 18 other states.

Related from 2021: Will the Minnesota Legislature’s plan to fix the sexual assault ‘intoxication loophole’ actually help?

In the Cornell case, Jane Doe, a then 20-year-old student, visited two bars in Ithaca, N.Y., with her sorority sisters and consumed about 10 drinks in about three hours.

According to court documents, she stumbled to Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house and was given more alcohol, ketamine and marijuana and sexually assaulted by two men, then five others.

After Jane Doe went to the campus police, the students were placed on temporary suspension and the fraternity was closed and remains barred from campus.

But no criminal charges were filed because the prosecutor, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, said, based on what he knew at the time, that Jane Doe’s case didn’t meet the legal standards to pursue a criminal case.

But Jane Doe’s filing of a civil lawsuit last week brought the case to national attention and a special prosecutor, New York Attorney General Letitia James, was named to review the case.

Rice, the criminal defense attorney, said that before the change in the law, the issue was whether someone consented to having sexual relations. Now there’s a second issue — whether the person consenting is under the influence of something.

Rice said that if a person is intoxicated, the law considers “their choice to be taken away.” He said that, like a child, an intoxicated person is now considered incapable of making a choice between consenting and not consenting in a sexual assault case.

Rice said the revised Minnesota law, in effect, takes away a key defense — consent — by determining that there are some people who don’t have the ability to say “no.”

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Originally reported by MinnPost by Ana Radelat. Read the full story at the source.