The Ideally suited Courtroom on Tuesday gave the one lady on dying row in Oklahoma a recent alternative to problem her sentence and conviction, announcing that prosecutors can have violated her proper to a good trial via introducing lurid proof about her sexual actions.
The lady, Brenda Andrew, used to be convicted of murdering her husband. Her trial used to be tainted, the bulk mentioned in an unsigned opinion, via “proof about Andrew’s intercourse existence and about her failings as a mom and spouse.”
“Amongst different issues,” the opinion added, “the prosecution elicited testimony about Andrew’s sexual companions attaining again twenty years; in regards to the outfits she wore to dinner or all over grocery runs; in regards to the undies she packed for holiday; and about how continuously she had intercourse in her automotive.”
Throughout ultimate arguments in 2004, a prosecutor dangled Ms. Andrew’s thong undies ahead of the jury. She had packed the undergarment for a travel to Mexico a couple of days after her estranged husband used to be killed.
The prosecutor mentioned the object used to be sturdy proof that Ms. Andrew had murdered her husband. “The grieving widow packs this to run off together with her boyfriend,” he mentioned, keeping her undies.
“That’s sufficient,” he mentioned. “Can’t twist the information, people. Can’t twist the proof.”
The spectacle “drew gasps from the crowded court,” an area newspaper reported.
The Ideally suited Courtroom despatched the case again to a federal appeals court docket for a brand new glance. “Without equal query,” the bulk wrote, quoting an previous opinion, “is whether or not a fair-minded jurist may disagree that the proof ‘so inflamed the trial with unfairness’ as to render the ensuing conviction or sentence ‘a denial of due procedure.’”
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined via Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented. “Intercourse and marriage had been unavoidable problems at Andrew’s trial,” Justice Thomas wrote, “and the state presented various proof about her sexual conduct.”
A lot of the proof used to be related, he wrote. “However no longer it all used to be so,” he wrote, corresponding to “this type of outfits Andrew wore to dinner outings.” Given the overpowering proof of guilt, Justice Thomas wrote, the inappropriate proof used to be risk free.
A brief supporting Ms. Andrew from a former federal pass judgement on and others mentioned the amount of prejudicial proof portraying her as “a hypersexual seductress” warranted assessment. “The prosecution presented reams of inflammatory proof about Ms. Andrew’s sexuality,” the temporary mentioned, together with “lurid main points of her a couple of affairs, her suggestive clothes and underwear, her cleavage or even a ebook on ‘Force a Guy Wild in Mattress.’”
In urging the Supreme Court to not pay attention the case, Andrew v. White, No. 23-6573, prosecutors mentioned virtually not anything to justify the use of proof about Ms. Andrew’s look and sexuality. They argued as a substitute that it used to be “however a drop within the ocean” within the case towards her. State and federal appeals courts have roughly agreed, suggesting that the prosecutors’ presentation used to be regrettable however that there used to be abundant proof of Ms. Andrew’s guilt.
The Oklahoma Courtroom of Legal Appeals, as an example, said in 2007 that it used to be “suffering to seek out any relevance” for far of the contested proof however added that “even so, the creation of this proof used to be risk free.”
The U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the tenth Circuit said in 2023 that it shared the state court docket’s “considerations about one of the vital ‘sexual and sexualizing’ proof admitted at trial” however that Ms. Andrew may no longer triumph over the top hurdles to difficult a state-court conviction in federal court docket.
Ms. Andrew’s boyfriend, James Pavatt, admitted to taking pictures her husband and mentioned he had acted on my own. However there used to be reason why to suppose Ms. Andrew used to be concerned, as a part of a plot to procure the proceeds of a existence insurance plans, and the government charged either one of them with capital homicide. Mr. Pavatt used to be additionally sentenced to dying.
In a partial dissent from the state court docket’s ruling in 2007, Judge Arlene Johnson, the one lady at the court docket on the time, mentioned she would have let Ms. Andrew’s conviction stand. However, she wrote, “I in finding it not possible to mention with self belief that the dying penalty right here used to be no longer imposed resulting from fallacious proof and argument,” including that the proof served “to trivialize the worth of her existence within the minds of the jurors.”
In dissent from the tenth Circuit’s resolution, Judge Robert E. Bacharach went additional, announcing he would have overturned no longer simplest her dying sentence but additionally her conviction.
“The state centered from begin to end on Ms. Andrew’s intercourse existence,” Pass judgement on Bacharach wrote. “This center of attention portrayed Ms. Andrew as a scarlet lady, a contemporary Jezebel, sparking mistrust in response to her free morals. The drumbeat on Ms. Andrew’s intercourse existence persisted in ultimate argument, plucking away any reasonable probability that the jury would critically believe her model of occasions.”
