State prosecutors cited 19th Judicial District Judge Gail Horne Ray’s past rulings and the defendant’s decision to waive a jury in lobbying for her removal Wednesday from the upcoming trial in the Madison Brooks rape case.
Ray has presided over cases involving two of the three defendants for the past two years, and she is currently set to determine one defendant's guilt or innocence in an upcoming bench trial.
Brooks was a 19-year-old LSU sophomore who died early the morning of Jan. 15, 2023, after a night of heavy drinking in Tigerland. She was allegedly raped in a car before being dropped off in a subdivision and fatally struck by a vehicle.
Prosecutors said Ray has seen too much pretrial evidence about Brooks’ sexual history. But when prosecutors cited the fact that Ray, a longtime defense attorney, represented her son in a rape case in the late 1990s, District Judge Brad Myers bristled at the inference.
“I’ll be quite honest with you, you’re offending me bringing this up,” said Myers, who will decide whether or not to recuse Ray from the upcoming trial. “The fact that in (1997), she represented her son, it’s irrelevant, quite frankly. What is the saying — don’t blame the sins of the father on the son. Well the opposite is true as well.
“So, other than attempting to trash her reputation, it’s irrelevant,” he said moments later.
Prosecutors filed a motion last month to have Ray recused from Casen John Carver’s case after she granted his request for a bench trial. That means the presiding judge, not a jury, will decide a verdict in Carver’s case after listening to evidence and testimony.
Carver, a 21-year-old Denham Springs man, is slated to be tried Dec. 1 on charges of first- and third-degree rape along with video voyeurism. If found guilty of the aggravated rape charge, he faces a mandatory life sentence.
He is one of three men indicted for allegedly sexually assaulting Brooks. Desmond Carter, 20, and Kaivon Deodre Washington, 21, also face aggravated rape charges. All three are being tried separately. Ray is also presiding over Carter’s case.
Ray ruled against prosecutors earlier this year in those two cases when she admitted testimony from two confidential witnesses about a sexual encounter Brooks had with a consensual partner one day before the alleged rape. Defense attorneys argued the testimony would help prove her sexual injuries were caused by someone else, but prosecutors said it violated shield laws aimed at protecting victims in rape cases.
The First Circuit Court of Appeal overturned Ray’s ruling in March, deeming the evidence about Brooks' sexual activity leading up to the alleged rape inadmissible “at this juncture.”
During a volatile hearing Wednesday afternoon inside the 19th JDC Courthouse, Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Barrios Heap argued Ray’s exposure to evidence that has now been ruled inadmissible entitled the state to her recusal.
“This is knowledge that goes far beyond someone reading a news article or having heard about the case before,” she said. “And because she’s now the sole trier of fact — if she were not, we wouldn’t have filed this motion to recuse. But that bell cannot be unrung.”
Authorities said Brooks left Reggie’s bar in Tigerland with Carter, Carver, Washington and another man who was not indicted. She got in a car with the four men, and sheriff's deputies said Carver pulled the vehicle into a residential driveway in the 900 block of Jennifer Jean Drive and parked there for 20 minutes.
That is where prosecutors allege Carter and Washington sexually assaulted Brooks in the back seat of the car, while Carver cheered them on from the front seat and recorded portions of the encounter with his cellphone.
Afterward, the men dropped off Brooks in the Pelican Lakes development, deputies said. Minutes after she got out of the car, she was struck and killed on Burbank Drive by a passing driver.
Attorneys for the indicted men have argued the sex was consensual, while prosecutors maintain Brooks was too intoxicated to give consent. She registered a blood alcohol content of 0.282, over three times the legal driving limit, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by her parents.
Prosecutors said the judge has heard information about Brooks' sexual history and made determinations about her credibility by ruling to admit testimony on her past encounters. They contend that amounts to a bias against the state, but indicated Ray's recusal didn’t become necessary until Carver waived a jury trial and placed his fate in the judge’s hands.
“We don’t want to delay the trial. We just want our shot at a fair trial,” Assistant District Attorney Jessica Fogan said. “This judge has been exposed to all of this highly inflammatory information that she found admissible.”
Myers seemed unconvinced by the argument that Ray’s prior rulings in the case were signs of a bias.
“Every judge’s ruling that goes adverse to a party — whether it’s you or the defendant — doesn’t prove that the judge is biased against the party that loses the motion,” he said.
Joe Long, Carver’s attorney, said there was no evidence that Ray is unable to conduct a fair and impartial bench trial.
“Bias is bias,” he told Myers. “This is a game they’re playing. They’re trying to game the system because they want to get a better chance at a different judge.
“If the prosecution can say that based on your rulings that they can recuse you because you’re no longer fair, it’s a shot across the bow to every judge in this district,” Long later added.
When Long argued that the defendant had no ties to Ray, Myers confronted him with a questionable text message Carver sent his father during the early stages of the case.
“The judge we are getting, I think you know about, but we are friends with her and she is really good for our case,” Carver wrote in the text, which Myers read aloud in court during Wednesday’s hearing.
“How does that inspire confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary when you have the defendant saying this?” Myers asked.
Long said it was a teenage defendant speculating, and insisted Carver doesn’t actually know Ray.
But Myers remained adamant that the texts can send the wrong message.
“In a vacuum that’s all fine and good. But does the public understand that? The public sees these, and says the fix is in. How can that conclusion not be drawn?”
Nelson Dan Taylor Jr., Ray’s 46-year-old son, was convicted of two counts apiece of forcible rape and aggravated burglary in 1997. Ray was one of his trial attorneys, according to court records.
When prosecutors spotlighted her involvement in that case and an ongoing obscenity case Taylor has in the 19th JDC now, Myers defended his colleague.
“I have no doubt that Judge Ray can be fair and impartial, quite frankly,” he said. “There’s nothing that suggests to me that she couldn’t be.”
“We’re talking about more than just a familial tie,” replied Fogan, one of the prosecutors. “This is not just arm’s length. It’s intimate involvement.”
“So because she represented her son in a similar case, she can’t hear any case involving a rape allegation?” Myers shot back.
Myers didn’t make a decision at Wednesday’s hearing. He said he would continue to review both sides’ arguments and intends to issue his written ruling by Monday.
