Concerns are being raised about the judge currently presiding over a case involving multiple black men accused of raping a white LSU student. Gail Horne Ray, a District Judge in Louisiana, appears to have a track record of leniency towards black men accused of rape.
Ray is the lead judge in the case of the alleged rape and subsequent death of 19-year-old Louisiana State University student Madison Brooks. Brooks was reportedly raped by four suspects, three black males and one white male, in a car last year. The suspects are alleged to have thrown the young woman out of their car onto a busy highway after the rape, where she was then hit by a car and died.
Some of the lawyers for the suspects are civil rights attorneys who have painted the prosecution’s case as having “racist” undertones, and had previously leaked videos of the victim to bias the case against her.
Ray became a judge in January of last year, and just three months after taking her oath she released De’Aundre Cox, who was convicted of raping a pre-teen girl, on reduced bail without informing the district attorney’s office or the victim. Last month, she dismissed the 1972 conviction of Donald Ray Link, who was found guilty of aggravated rape, despite Link’s lawyers never having requested this be done.
Ray claimed that the jury had been given “improper instructions” in the trial 50 years ago, even though District Attorney Hillar Moore III noted the defense was rejected during an appeal in the 1990s. The case is currently stayed by the Louisiana Supreme Court.
Ray is also a Silver Life member of the NAACP, with the organization’s Baton Rouge branch having previously granted her the President’s Award. She has also received the “Justice for Youth Award” from the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana.
Notably, Ray represented her own son after he was accused of multiple rapes to which he ultimately pleaded guilty. Writing for Fox News, Chris Eberhart suggested that “all this, at the very least, may create poor optics in an already controversial criminal case and stoke angst among Brooks’ family.”
The defense lawyers in the Brooks case are set to challenge the prosecutors’ assertion that the victim had a blood alcohol level of 0.319% at the time, above the state’s legal driving limit of 0.08%. The defense has maintained that the sex was consensual and that the case would not have proceeded if Brooks hadn’t tragically died.
Two of the suspects, Casen Carver and Desmond Carter, are set to appear in court on July 2nd.
