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Louisiana Supreme Court reverses Baton Rouge judge's decision to free rapist behind bars 50 years
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BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Supreme Court said Thursday a Baton Rouge judge erred when she threw out a man's rape conviction when all he asked her for was a reduced sentence.
Judge Gail Horne Ray, whose son is a serial rapist, was not authorized to find Donald Ray Link not guilty for a 1972 rape, the court said. One justice criticized Ray for a "patent abuse of discretion."
Link has been behind bars for five decades and had asked Ray to shorten his sentence so he could seek parole. Instead, Ray nullified Link's conviction and said she intended to set him free.
East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutors immediately asked the state Supreme Court to intervene and on Thursday the court reversed Ray's decision. Link was never released and, after Thursday's court ruling, likely never will be.
The unsigned order from the court said Ray erred in several ways: she used a portion of the law reserved to appellate courts, wrongly determined that Link's jury was given bad instructions, did not make Link cite any purported illegality involving his sentence and considered his request even though it wasn't filed in a timely manner.
"We reinstate the conviction and sentence, and we deny respondent's (Link's) motion to clarify and/or modify his sentence," the court said while announcing its 6-0 decision.
District Attorney Hillar Moore III said his office was pleased that the justices rejected the judge and Link.
"We are grateful that the Louisiana Supreme Court reinstated this decades-old conviction and sentence," Moore said. "The court went one step further, ruling on the defendant’s motion that was originally before the trial court, confirming that the sentence imposed in 1973 was absolutely legal and valid."
The justices said Link has exhausted all his claims and that its denial is final. He would have to find a narrow exception to laws barring successive appeals to bring another claim, the court said.
Link had claimed in 2022 that Ray was taking too long to act on a request that the judge review his sentence, and the state Supreme Court directed her to take action. In a concurring opinion Thursday, Justice Scott Crichton said Ray's actions following that order was inappropriate.
"The district court's ill-conceived response to the order was to issue a grossly erroneous ruling that had a retaliatory if not contemptuous tone and, incredibly, resulted in the fashioning of an illegal remedy that even defendant (Link) had not requested," Crichton wrote.
Prosecutors said that Ray's decision to free Link was without precedent.
The judge’s son, Nelson Dan Taylor Jr., was convicted at age 17 after admitting to a series of rapes.
Taylor, a former Baton Rouge Magnet High School track star, was accused of breaking into the homes of six girls between October 1995 and April 1996 and raping them. Amid the investigation, detectives said seven of nine girls victimized in a series of attacks were BRHS students.
Taylor’s plea deal took a possible life term off the table and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. As part of a plea deal, he was required to serve at least 25 years.
Link had been convicted in a Nov. 18, 1972, rape during which he threatened the victim with a butcher knife. The jury heard his confession and sentenced him to life in prison in 1973, and the state Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 1974.
Ray last year also reduced bail for an accused rapist, authorizing a lower bond before his alleged victim’s family ever knew. Moore had to go to court to seek De’Aundre Cox’s return to jail. He said at the time the prosecutors were not allowed to argue against lowering the bail; Ray later upheld letting Cox leave under the lower amount.
Ray is also the judge handing the rape charges against three men accused in an assault on LSU student Madison Brooks after a night of drinking in Tigerland in early 2023.
After her initial ruling in the Link case, Court Administrator Diana Gibbens said judicial canons prohibited Ray from commenting.
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