US Supreme Court gives boost to woman who claimed ‘sexist stereotypes’ in murder verdict Reuters

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday gave a boost to an Oklahoma death row inmate who argued that she was infected with what her lawyers called “sexist stereotypes” by prosecutors who presented the jury. the evidence. about her sex life and revealing clothing.

In an unsigned ruling Tuesday, the justices overturned a decision by the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that dismissed inmate Brenda Andrew’s claim that her right to due process under the U.S. Constitution was violated by the type of prosecution evidence admitted during her trial. Her lawyers called the evidence irrelevant and damaging.

Andrew’s case will return to the 10th Circuit Court to assess whether her trial was fundamentally unfair under the legal standard the Supreme Court clarified in its ruling.

“The State spent considerable time at trial introducing evidence about Andrew’s sex life and her failings as a mother and wife, much of which it later conceded was irrelevant,” the court wrote.

The question the 10th Circuit must address is “whether a fair-minded jurist reviewing this record could disagree with Andrew that the trial court’s erroneous admission of irrelevant evidence was so ‘unduly prejudicial’ as to render her trial ‘fundamentally unfair.’ ,” added the court.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision, calling the 10th Circuit’s ruling “absolutely correct.”

Andrew was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the 2001 shooting death of her husband, Robert Andrew, at their Oklahoma City home. Her convicted co-conspirator and lover, life insurance agent James Pavatt, was also sentenced to death.

Prosecutors presented evidence during her trial that she wanted to benefit from her husband’s $800,000 life insurance policy that Pavatt helped arrange. She denied any role in her husband’s murder.

Brenda and Robert Andrew, who had two children together, were separated at the time of his death.

Brenda Andrew said that while her husband was trying to help turn on the stove in the garage of their home, two masked men entered and shot him twice with a shotgun. She received a small-caliber gunshot wound on her arm.

Paramedics who arrived after she called 911 were unable to revive her husband, who had suffered extensive blood loss, according to court records.

Brenda Andrew and Pavatt were convicted in separate trials of conspiracy and commission of Robert’s murder and both were sentenced to death. Pavatt remains on death row in Oklahoma.

Prosecutors presented what they described as “indisputable evidence that Andrew and Pavatt planned Robert’s murder after trying to take control of Robert’s life insurance policy.”

At her trial, Brenda Andrew’s lawyers sought to undermine the charges against her by asserting her status as a good mother, a claim prosecutors sought to refute. Her lawyers argue that prosecutors and the trial judge violated her constitutional rights by allowing jurors to see “a wealth of irrelevant evidence and arguments that capitalize on gender stereotypes.”

Prosecutors presented evidence that Brenda Andrew wore revealing clothing to a restaurant and was called “hoochie” by a customer, that her husband found new underwear he never saw her wearing, that she had numerous affairs during their engagement and marriage , and that she taught their children to be discreet when men visited her at home.

Other evidence presented at trial showed that Pavatt helped Robert Andrew set up a life insurance policy before his murder, and that Pavatt and Brenda Andrew forged the victim’s signature on a change of ownership form, according to court records.

Pavatt’s adult daughter testified that her father told her that Brenda Andrew had asked Pavatt to kill Robert Andrew – a request that occurred around the same time that the brake lines of Robert’s car were cut. Afterwards, Robert Andrew told Pavatt’s boss that he suspected his wife and Pavatt were trying to kill him, and inquired about removing her as a beneficiary of his insurance policy.

Pavatt admitted that he planned and committed the murder without Brenda Andrew.

In an appeal to the Supreme Court, her lawyers pointed out that the prosecution presented “evidence about her sexual history, sexual presentation, behavior and motherhood”. They wrote that “the evidence presented in Ms. Andrew’s case was not only irrelevant, it was unfairly prejudicial in ways that played on sexist stereotypes.”

“We are disappointed, but we respect the court’s decision,” the office of Oklahoma Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement.