In a rare legal win for a death row inmate, the Supreme Court ruled that the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row can challenge her conviction. It stems from an allegation prosecutors unfairly focused on her sex life at her trial. The court ruled in a 7-2 decision that a lower court was wrong to throw out Brenda Andrew’s claim.
The 61-year-old Andrew is in jail on a murder conviction. A state court convicted her of murdering her husband. He was shot twice when coming to pick up their two children.
Both Andrew and her boyfriend, James Pavatt, received death sentences for their roles in the case.
But now, Andrew is filing suit, claiming that prosecutors violated due process by raising extensive details about her sex life. It’s something her lawyers say distracted from a lack of evidence tying her to the crime.
The Supreme Court pointed to examples of some of that evidence when it ruled to allow Andrew’s case to proceed. The court wrote that “Among other things, the prosecution elicited testimony about Andrew’s sexual partners reaching back two decades; about the outfits she wore to dinner or during grocery runs; about the underwear she packed for vacation; and about how often she had sex in her car.”
In a concurring opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that a “flood of irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence” can violate someone’s due process rights, even if the case includes properly admitted evidence.
In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “Sex and marriage were unavoidable issues at Andrew’s trial, and the State introduced a variety of evidence about her sexual behavior.”
Andrew is not off death row just yet. She now needs to make the case that prosecutors’ actions violated her rights to due process. If she loses and the state executes her, she would be just the fourth woman executed since Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
