WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a rare ruling in favor of a death row inmate, ruling that an Oklahoma woman convicted of killing her ex-husband can proceed by saying prosecutors focused on inappropriate comments about his sex life during his trial.
Divided 7-2, the court opened the door for Brenda Andrew to challenge her conviction and death sentence. She is the only woman on death row in Oklahoma.
The court ruled that an appeals court erred in concluding that Andrew’s claim that his due process rights were violated because of the focus on his personal life, including the treatment reserved for his children, could not move forward.
The right to due process under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment “prohibits the introduction of so unduly prejudicial evidence as to render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair,” the Supreme Court said in an unsigned opinion.
The case will now return to the lower federal courts for further litigation on Andrew’s habeas corpus petition.
Andrew was convicted in state court of the 2001 murder of her husband Rob, who was shot twice with a shotgun in the garage of their former family home in Oklahoma City while he was picking up their two children .
Her alleged accomplice, her boyfriend James Pavatt, was also prosecuted and is currently on death row. Andrew, now 61, was herself shot in the arm during the incident.
Andrew’s conviction was upheld in state court, prompting him to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court, which was also denied.
Andrew’s lawyers say prosecutors focused on her personal life because they lacked concrete evidence linking her to the crime
Among the issues raised at trial were that Andrew had previously had relationships with other men, that she dressed provocatively and that she had made sexual advances toward two young men working in her garden.
Toward the end of the trial, a prosecutor held up a thong belonging to Andrew and asked the jury if a “grieving widow” would wear such an item of clothing. The prosecutor also used the term “slutty puppy” to refer to Andrew, her lawyers said, although the state says that comment was not directly referring to her.
The prosecutor’s case “sought to secure a conviction and death sentence by disparaging her reputation as a woman,” her lawyers said in court documents.
Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, disagreed with Tuesday’s ruling.
Thomas wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court failed to follow its own rules in determining whether a habeas corpus petition arising from a state court suit could move forward.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in court documents that there was “overwhelming evidence that Andrew and Pavatt plotted the murder” in order to access a life insurance payout.
Andrew, he added, had a “visceral hatred” for her husband, and evidence of his “ability to convince men…to carry out his orders” was relevant to the case.
