BATON ROUGE — Baton Rouge District Judge Gail Horne Ray’s son returned to court on Wednesday as he tries to have multiple nearly 30-year-old forcible rape charges and their sentences set aside, The Advocate reported.

During his first hearing to have the convictions dropped, Nelson Taylor, 46, argued that a 2001 motion to set aside his conviction was never ruled on by a judge and clarification was still needed on its status.

The Advocate reported that Wednesday’s hearing comes from Taylor’s motion that was filed in November, which was delayed after all of the 19th Judicial District Court judges recused themselves from the case last year over Taylor being Ray’s son. District Attorney Hillar Moore has also filed to recuse his office.

The Louisiana Supreme Court assigned retired First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael McDonald to handle the case, and Brett Sommer, an assistant district attorney from Livingston Parish, was assigned as the prosecutor.

Taylor initially pleaded guilty to three counts of forcible rape and five counts of aggravated burglary in 1997 for a series of attacks the then high school student committed against multiple girls, some who were his classmates, from fall 1995 to spring 1996.

At the time, prosecutors said Taylor surprised the victims in their bedrooms while armed with a knife or gun and while wearing a mask, and used tape to cover the girls’ eyes and mouths. The 1997 plea avoided a life sentence for Taylor, then 17, with a judge giving him 50 years.