The Judge in the Madison Brooks Rape Case Has a Convicted Rapist for a Son. A Defendant Told His Father She’s “On Our Side.”
Madison Brooks was 19, a sophomore at LSU, when she left Reggie’s bar in Tigerland with three men and a 17-year-old boy in the early hours of January 15, 2023. She was allegedly raped in the back seat of their car, then dropped off in a nearby subdivision, where she wandered into the road and was struck and killed. The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office found injuries consistent with sexual assault and a blood-alcohol level of .319g% — nearly four times Louisiana’s legal driving limit. The driver who hit her was investigated and never charged; a grand jury returned no true bill. The three adult suspects — Casen Carver, Kaivon Washington, and Washington’s uncle Everett Lee — were arrested and released on bond ranging from $50,000 to $150,000. The fourth, then a 17-year-old whose name was withheld, was later indicted as an adult and identified as Desmond Carter.
More than three years later, the case is still moving through the 19th Judicial District Court — and Fox News Digital reported this week that court records show the judge presiding over it, Gail Horne Ray, has a son of her own who is a convicted serial rapist. A recusal motion in the case includes text messages in which Carver allegedly told his father the judge “knows to help us” because of her son’s history, and that “the judge is on our side.”
This piece lays out what the court filings, the Louisiana Supreme Court’s own rulings, and a separate state Judiciary Commission proceeding actually show — and what remains alleged, unproven, or still pending.
- 50 years the sentence Judge Ray's son, Nelson Dan Taylor Jr., received in 1997 after pleading guilty to forcible rape as a Baton Rouge High School student — The Advocate / WBRZ
- .319g% Madison Brooks' blood-alcohol level when she was allegedly raped and then struck and killed by a car in January 2023 — East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office
- Aug. 17, 2026 the date Judge Ray is set to preside over defendant Desmond Carter's rape trial — days after the report on her son — WBRZ / Fox News
- Aug. 26, 2026 the date the Louisiana Judiciary Commission has scheduled a misconduct hearing against Judge Ray on two unrelated counts — The Advocate
Carver, who is charged as a principal to rape and with video voyeurism in Brooks’ case, waived his right to a jury trial — meaning under Louisiana law, Judge Ray alone would decide whether he is guilty. According to the recusal motion filed by the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s office, text messages between Carver and his father from 2023 described the judge assigned to the case as favorably disposed toward him because “her son was accused of rape a while back so she knows to help us,” and separately stated the “judge is on our side” and would “rule in our favor.”
Carver is presumed innocent of the underlying rape charge unless and until a court finds otherwise. But the texts themselves are not in dispute — they are quoted directly in the court record, and 19th JDC Judge Brad Myers, who ultimately ruled on the recusal motion, called them “particularly concerning” in his written order.
Nelson Dan Taylor Jr., now 46, pleaded guilty in 1997 to three counts of forcible rape and five counts of aggravated burglary after a string of attacks on multiple girls, some of them his classmates at Baton Rouge High School, between the fall of 1995 and the spring of 1996 — breaking into their bedrooms armed and masked. He was sentenced to 50 years; a 2001 post-conviction plea deal dropped the burglary counts and reduced his term to 40. Taylor is now, separately, back in court trying to have those 1997 convictions vacated entirely, arguing the 2001 deal was never properly ruled on — a procedural claim that became live again after the state Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that this kind of after-the-fact plea amendment was unconstitutional. He is not seeking parole; he is seeking to erase the conviction, in the same judicial district his mother sits in.
Judge Gail Horne Ray is a registered Democrat who served two terms on the Louisiana Democratic Party’s State Central Committee before winning her seat on the 19th Judicial District Court, Division G, in a December 10, 2022 special election. She took office January 26, 2023 — eleven days after Brooks died — and inherited the case not long after.
Judge Gail Horne Ray (D), 19th Judicial District Court, Division G — presides over Casen Carver’s bench trial and Desmond Carter’s August 17 jury trial.
Hillar Moore (D), East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney since 2009 — his office is prosecuting all four defendants and sought Ray’s recusal.
Two other 19th JDC judges have faced public discipline since 2025: Judge Eboni Johnson Rose accepted a two-month unpaid suspension, and Judge Tiffany Foxworth-Roberts was removed from the bench for “a pattern of falsehoods.”
DA Moore’s office moved to recuse Ray from Carver’s case in the fall of 2025, pointing to the texts alongside a separate concern: Ray had earlier ruled that evidence about Brooks’ sexual history could be used at trial, a ruling later overturned on appeal — leaving prosecutors to argue she could not simply “un-ring” a bell she had already heard. Judge Myers granted the recusal on November 4, 2025, finding that while the son’s conviction alone might not require it, the texts combined with it did. Louisiana’s First Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed that decision in March 2026.
Then, in a one-paragraph supervisory writ issued around May 30, 2026, the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed both lower courts and put Ray back on the case, ruling the state “failed to carry its burden” to require recusal. The decision was non-unanimous and offered no detailed reasoning. Moore said the high court’s ruling “lacks the detailed legal reasoning provided by the lower courts” and sought a rehearing; the justices declined to reconsider on June 25, 2026. Carver’s defense attorney, Joe Long, saw it differently: “Both courts said the judge was fair and was not biased, yet they still wanted to remove her.”
“Both courts said the judge was fair and was not biased, yet they still wanted to remove her.”
Joe Long · defense attorney for Casen Carver
Carver’s bench trial — the one where Ray alone will decide his guilt — is now reset for November 16, 2026, back on her docket.
The Madison Brooks recusal fight is not the only place Judge Ray’s rulings have drawn formal scrutiny. In April 2026, the Louisiana Judiciary Commission filed a notice of hearing accusing her of “willful misconduct” in a separate case: she vacated Donald Ray Link’s 1973 aggravated-rape conviction and life sentence — a case that came to her only as a request for parole-eligibility clarification — without letting prosecutors argue against it, citing jury-instruction errors the commission says the record doesn’t support. The state Supreme Court later reinstated Link’s conviction, calling Ray’s ruling a “patent abuse of discretion.” DA Moore did not mince words at the time: “I’ve never seen this done ever or heard of it ever done before.”
“I've never seen this done ever or heard of it ever done before.”
Hillar Moore · East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney, on Judge Ray's ruling in the Link case
The commission’s notice also cites a second, unrelated complaint from Ray’s time as a defense attorney: that she accepted $4,800 from a client seeking post-conviction relief on a 60-year drug sentence, filed only one motion over more than two years, met with him just once by phone, and dropped his case days before taking the bench — without the termination letter ever reaching him. Ray’s attorney says her firm refunded $4,500and characterizes both matters as good-faith errors, not intentional misconduct. Neither complaint involves the Brooks case. Both are scheduled for a Judiciary Commission hearing on August 26, 2026 — nine days after Desmond Carter’s trial is set to begin in her courtroom.
Judge Ray is still on the bench for Brooks’ case, and still ruling on it. On August 6, 2026, she denied a defense motion to bar spectators from wearing pink — Brooks’ favorite color — at Carter’s upcoming trial, while barring clothing bearing Brooks’ image. Brooks’ mother, Ashley Baustert, welcomed the ruling: “We wear it to honor her. It’s not about anyone except for Madison.”
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Carter’s trial opens August 17, before a jury, with Ray ruling on the pretrial motions. Carver’s bench trial — where Ray alone decides guilt, in the case built partly on texts calling her “on our side” — follows November 16. Washington and Lee’s cases remain pending without trial dates. And on August 26, a state commission will hear whether Ray committed willful misconduct in a case that has nothing to do with Madison Brooks at all — a hearing that will unfold in the middle of the highest-profile trial of her career, over a case the Louisiana Supreme Court has twice said she is fit to hear.
Nothing here proves Judge Gail Horne Ray was actually biased toward the men accused of raping Madison Brooks — the Louisiana Supreme Court has twice ruled the state didn’t prove it, over the objections of two lower courts and the elected district attorney. What is documented and undisputed: her own son is a convicted serial rapist litigating his own case in her district; a defendant awaiting trial before her, without a jury, told his father in writing that she was “on our side”; and a separate state commission has accused her of willful misconduct for freeing a different convicted rapist without letting prosecutors object. Voters elected Gail Horne Ray to this bench. Whether she keeps deciding Madison Brooks’ case is now a question for a courtroom she still controls.
