BATON ROUGE - An appeals court has ruled that defense lawyers cannot use Madison Brooks' sexual history in their attempt to combat rape charges. 

Arrest documents say Brooks, a 19-year-old LSU student, left Reggie's Bar with Casen Carver, Kaivon Washington, Desmond Carter and Everett Lee in the early morning hours of Jan. 15, 2023. The group went to a parking lot, where Washington and Carter are accused of raping Brooks in the backseat of Carver's vehicle. The men told officers that Brooks requested to go home and they took her to an address in the Pelican Lakes subdivision and dropped her off. After they left, Brooks wandered into the roadway and was hit and killed by a rideshare driver. 

Washington, Carter and Carver were arrested for rape. Carver is charged with rape even though there is no evidence that he had sex with Brooks.

Attorneys for Carver and Carter argued that new evidence presented a year after Brooks was killed showed that she had consensual rough sex with another man the day before she died. They said the injuries noted during her autopsy were not from the alleged rape that occurred in the back of Carver's vehicle. 

In March 2024, District Attorney Hillar Moore said the motion violates the Louisiana Code of Evidence because it discusses a victim's past sexual behavior, which the code requires to be in documents kept separate and sealed.

A year later, the First Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the DA, saying that the newly found evidence could not be used at trial.

"The evidence of M. B.' s alleged past sexual behavior is excluded at this juncture. The fundamental right to present a defense does not require the trial court to admit irrelevant evidence or evidence with such little probative value that it is substantially outweighed by other legitimate considerations," the decision said. 

Moore said his office was satisfied with the decision. 

"We are pleased with the court’s ruling that will prohibit the defendant from introducing overly prejudicial and irrelevant evidence at the trial.," he said in a statement.