The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 21 summarily overturned the conviction of an Oklahoma woman sentenced to death for murdering her estranged husband.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed an opinion dissenting from the new decision. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the dissent.
Andrew is Oklahoma’s only female death row inmate.
Andrew said prosecutors “sex-shamed” her at her trial, displaying her thong underwear for the jury to see. Prosecutors’ use of her “plainly irrelevant sexual history” ran afoul of her due process rights and ought to invalidate her 2004 conviction, the Supreme Court said.
At trial, prosecutors focused on “evidence about Andrew’s sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife, much of which it later conceded was irrelevant,” the court said.
Andrew argued in her appeal that allowing the evidence prejudiced her, meaning it unfairly harmed her case and affected her legal rights, the Supreme Court opinion said.
A divided 10th Circuit rejected that argument, finding that the Supreme Court has never “established a general rule that the erroneous admission of prejudicial evidence could violate due process.”
But the circuit court was “wrong,” the Supreme Court ruled. The nation’s highest court said it made it clear in Payne v. Tennessee (1991) that because some evidence may be “so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides a mechanism for relief.”
The case goes back to Nov. 20, 2001, when the petitioner’s husband, Ron Andrew, died after being shot in his garage.
The petitioner said two armed individuals carried out the shooting, which resulted in her being shot in the arm.
Andrew said that at the time of the killing, she was separated from her husband and was dating James Pavatt, an insurance agent, but continued to have contact with her husband because they had two children, the summary said.
Pavatt and Andrew became suspects after they visited Mexico together after the husband’s passing. They became murder suspects, and Pavatt later admitted he carried out the violent attack with one of his friends. Pavatt said Andrew was not involved.
Oklahoma charged both Pavatt and Andrew with murder, and a jury convicted him and imposed the death sentence. At Andrew’s trial, prosecutors argued she entered into a conspiracy with Pavatt to kill her husband to cash in on his life insurance policy.
The prosecution presented evidence regarding “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.”
At least two witnesses testified that Andrew wore provocative clothing. Others were prompted to discuss if a good mother would conduct herself as Andrew had.
Prosecutors presented evidence about affairs that Andrew allegedly had during college and said she kept a boyfriend on the side during her marriage.
“At both the guilt and sentencing phases, prosecutors contrasted Andrew with the victim, whom they asserted had been ‘committed to God,’” according to the summary.
Andrew was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. She appealed.
A divided Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals found that evidence concerning the petitioner’s extramarital liaisons was acceptable because it demonstrated that “her co-defendant was just the last in a long line of men that she seduced.”
The court acknowledged most of the character evidence “was irrelevant to any issue in this case” but would not grant relief because it found the trial court had only committed harmless errors, the summary said.
The case moved to federal district court, where Andrew argued the character evidence’s admission violated her due process rights. The court ruled against her, and she appealed again.
The Supreme Court disagreed with the circuit court in its new ruling, holding that “clearly established law provided that the Due Process Clause forbids the introduction of evidence so unduly prejudicial as to render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair.”
In his dissent, Thomas wrote that the 10th Circuit followed the Supreme Court’s rules “for identifying clearly established federal law.”
The state presented “overwhelming evidence” of Andrew’s guilt, and the Supreme Court’s majority “inaccurately portrays the State’s evidence, the prosecution’s closing arguments, and the reasoning of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals,” he said.
It is the Supreme Court, “and not the Tenth Circuit, that has deviated from settled law,” Thomas wrote.
Leslie Berger, press secretary for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, told The Epoch Times, “We are disappointed but respect the court’s decision.”
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Andrew’s attorney, John R. Mills of Phillips Black in Oakland, California, but no reply was received by publication time.
