Throughout his closing argument within the 2004 homicide trial of Brenda Andrew in Oklahoma, a prosecutor dangled her thong underwear earlier than the jury. She had packed the undergarment for a visit to Mexico a number of days after her estranged husband was killed.
The prosecutor, Gayland Gieger, stated the merchandise was sturdy proof that Ms. Andrew had murdered her husband. “The grieving widow packs this to run off together with her boyfriend,” he stated, holding her underwear.
“That’s sufficient,” he stated. “Can’t twist the information, of us. Can’t twist the proof.”
The spectacle “drew gasps from the crowded courtroom,” a neighborhood newspaper reported. The jury convicted Ms. Andrew and condemned her to demise. She is the one girl on the state’s demise row.
Later this month, the Supreme Court docket will take into account whether or not to listen to Ms. Andrew’s enchantment, which stated the show of her underwear was a consultant a part of an unrelenting technique by prosecutors, as a dissenting choose put it, “of introducing proof that has no function apart from to hammer residence that Brenda Andrew is a nasty spouse, a nasty mom and a nasty girl.”
Nathalie Greenfield, certainly one of Ms. Andrew’s attorneys, stated gender stereotypes contaminated the trial and poisoned the jury.
“Each single day the state was presenting gendered proof about her look, about her clothes, about her sexual practices, about her expertise as a mom,” she stated. “We’ve bought somebody who’s prone to execution for not conforming to gender stereotypes.”
A short supporting Ms. Andrew from a former federal choose and others stated the amount of prejudicial proof portraying her as “a hypersexual seductress” warranted evaluate. “The prosecution launched reams of inflammatory proof about Ms. Andrew’s sexuality,” the transient stated, together with “lurid particulars of her a number of affairs, her suggestive clothes and lingerie, her cleavage and even a e-book on tips on how to ‘Drive a Man Wild in Mattress.’”
The Supreme Court docket has overturned a demise sentence based mostly on testimony tainted by racial bias, saying that “some toxins will be lethal in small doses.” Ms. Andrew’s case asks whether or not courts ought to take an analogous strategy to proof grounded in gender stereotypes.
“Gender bias is normalized and tolerated to an extent that racial bias now not is within the administration of the demise penalty,” stated Sandra Babcock, a legislation professor at Cornell who represents Ms. Andrew in a associated case. “Ladies on trial for capital homicide have been subjected to related shaming ways for tons of of years.”
In urging the Supreme Court docket to not hear the case, Andrew v. White, No. 23-6573, prosecutors stated nearly nothing to justify utilizing proof about Ms. Andrew’s look and sexuality. They argued as an alternative that it was “however a drop within the ocean” within the case towards her. State and federal appeals courts have kind of agreed, suggesting that the prosecutors’ presentation was regrettable however that there was ample proof of Ms. Andrew’s guilt.
The Oklahoma Court docket of Prison Appeals, for example, stated in 2007 that it was “struggling to search out any relevance” for a lot of the contested proof however added that “even so, the introduction of this proof was innocent.”
The U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the tenth Circuit stated final 12 months that it shared the state court docket’s “issues about a few of the ‘sexual and sexualizing’ proof admitted at trial” however that Ms. Andrew couldn’t overcome the excessive hurdles to difficult a state-court conviction in federal court docket.
Ms. Andrew’s boyfriend, James Pavatt, admitted to taking pictures her husband and stated he had acted alone. However there was motive to suppose Ms. Andrew was concerned, as a part of a plot to acquire the proceeds of a life insurance coverage coverage, and the authorities charged each of them with capital homicide. Mr. Pavatt was additionally sentenced to demise, and he’s scheduled to be executed in July.
In a partial dissent from the state court docket’s ruling in 2007, Choose Arlene Johnson, the one girl on the court docket on the time, stated she would have let Ms. Andrew’s conviction stand. However, she wrote, “I discover it not possible to say with confidence that the demise penalty right here was not imposed as a consequence of improper proof and argument” that served “to trivialize the worth of her life within the minds of the jurors.”
In dissent final 12 months from the tenth Circuit’s choice, Choose Robert E. Bacharach went additional, saying he would have overturned not solely her demise sentence but in addition her conviction.
“The state centered from begin to end on Ms. Andrew’s intercourse life,” Choose Bacharach wrote. “This focus portrayed Ms. Andrew as a scarlet girl, a contemporary Jezebel, sparking mistrust based mostly on her unfastened morals. The drumbeat on Ms. Andrew’s intercourse life continued in closing argument, plucking away any practical likelihood that the jury would severely take into account her model of occasions.”
Ms. Babcock stated a male defendant wouldn’t have been handled as Ms. Andrew had been. “It’s inconceivable that the prosecution would dangle his favourite pair of boxers in entrance of the jury,” she stated, “and argue that they proved his guilt.”
