BATON ROUGE - A trial date for one of three people accused of raping Madison Brooks, a 19-year-old LSU student who was killed in 2023, was set on Thursday. 

Desmond Carter, 21, will be on trial for first- and third-degree rape on Dec. 7. 

Thursday's hearing revolved around multiple motions lawyers for Carter have filed attempting to exclude swaths of evidence from the state. 

In one filing, the state argues that the following text messages sent by Carter to Kaivon Washington, Casen Carver and Everett Lee after Brooks' death should not be excluded from being heard during the hearing. 

Carter was 17 when he was taken into custody for Brooks' rape. On the night she died, Brooks was drinking at Reggie's Bar in Tigerland and left the area with Carter, Washington, Carver and Lee. Police say Carver drove the group to a parking lot where Carter and Washington had sex with Brooks. 

The men told officers that Brooks then requested to go home and gave the group multiple wrong addresses before she asked to be dropped off at the front of the Pelican Lakes subdivision, where she wandered onto Burbank Drive and in front of a car. A coroner's report said Brooks' BAC was .319 and she had physical injuries consistent with rape when she died. 

Carter's lawyers asked for Brooks' death to be excluded in evidence during the trial. The state combatted the argument, saying that the information is relevant to the case, especially as it helps to explain why the jury isn't hearing testimony from the victim. 

Defense attorneys also asked for the word "victim" to not be used to refer to Brooks during the trial and tried to exclude testimony from the state's expert witness on toxicology. 

The district attorney's office is attempting to hold Carter's lawyers in contempt of court on a technicality, stating that in a filing over whether or not spectators could wear pink during the trial in support of the victim and her family, the lawyer copied down Brooks' name. The state argued that it is illegal to disclose the name of a victim in a sex crime, and she should have instead been referred to by her initials, M.B.