By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday gave a boost to a female Oklahoma death row inmate who claimed her 2004 conviction for murdering her estranged husband was tainted by what her lawyers called “sexist stereotyping” by prosecutors who presented to the jury evidence about her sex life and revealing clothing.
The justices in an unsigned ruling threw out a lower court’s decision rejecting 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 had called the evidence irrelevant and prejudicial.
She 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 paramour, life insurance agent James Pavatt, was also sentenced to death.
Prosecutors during her trial presented evidence that she sought to benefit from her husband’s $800,000 life insurance policy that Pavatt had helped arrange. She has 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 has said that while her husband was trying to help her light the furnace in the garage of their home, two masked men entered and shot him two times with a shotgun. She sustained a small caliber gunshot wound to her arm.
Emergency responders who arrived after she called the 911 emergency number 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 conspiring and carrying out Robert’s murder and were each sentenced to death. Pavatt remains on Oklahoma’s death row.
Prosecutors presented what they described as “overwhelming evidence that Andrew and Pavatt plotted the murder of Robert after seeking to gain control of Robert’s life insurance policy.”
At her trial, Brenda Andrew’s lawyers sought to undermine the charges against her by establishing her standing as a good mother, an assertion prosecutors sought to rebut. Her lawyers claim that prosecutors and the trial judge violated her constitutional rights by allowing jurors to see “a passel of irrelevant evidence and argument capitalizing on sex-based stereotypes.”
Prosecutors presented evidence that Brenda Andrew had worn revealing clothing to a restaurant and that a customer had called her a “hoochie,” that her husband found new lingerie that he never saw her wear, that she had numerous affairs during their engagement and marriage, and that she had coached their children to be discreet about her being visited by men at home.
Other evidence presented at the trial showed that Pavatt helped Robert Andrew set up the life insurance policy prior to his killing, 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 had 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. Afterward, Robert Andrew told Pavatt’s boss that he suspected that his wife and Pavatt were trying to kill him, and inquired about removing her as the beneficiary of his insurance policy.
Pavatt confessed to plotting and committing the murder without Brenda Andrew.
A three-judge panel of the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to reject Brenda Andrew’s challenge to her murder conviction.
The dissenting vote, Judge Robert Bacharach, wrote that Andrew’s conviction should be thrown out because the admission of the controversial evidence, as well as other trial court errors, had deprived Andrew of “her constitutional right to fundamental fairness.”
In an appeal to the Supreme Court, her lawyers noted that the prosecution presented “evidence about her sexual history, gender presentation, demeanor and motherhood.” They wrote that “the evidence presented in Ms. Andrew’s case was not merely irrelevant, but was unfairly prejudicial in ways that played on sexist stereotyping.”
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
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