US Supreme Court gives boost to woman who claimed 'sexist stereotyping' in murder conviction

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court connected Tuesday gave a boost to a pistillate Oklahoma decease enactment inmate who claimed her 2004 condemnation for murdering her estranged hubby was tainted by what her lawyers called "sexist stereotyping" by prosecutors who presented to the assemblage grounds astir her enactment beingness and revealing clothing.

The justices successful an unsigned ruling connected Tuesday threw retired a determination by the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting inmate Brenda Andrew's assertion that her close to owed process nether the U.S. Constitution was violated by the benignant of prosecution grounds admitted during her trial. Her lawyers had called the grounds irrelevant and prejudicial.

Andrew's lawsuit volition instrumentality to the 10th Circuit to measure whether her proceedings proceedings were fundamentally unfair nether a ineligible modular that the Supreme Court clarified successful its ruling.

"The authorities spent important clip astatine proceedings introducing grounds astir Andrew’s enactment beingness and astir her failings arsenic a parent and wife, overmuch of which it aboriginal conceded was irrelevant," the tribunal wrote.

The question that the 10th Circuit tribunal indispensable code is "whether a fair-minded jurist reviewing this grounds could disagree with Andrew that the proceedings court’s mistaken admittance of irrelevant grounds was truthful 'unduly prejudicial' arsenic to render her proceedings 'fundamentally unfair,' " the tribunal added.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the Supreme Court's ruling, calling the 10th Circuit's determination "entirely correct." 

Andrew was sentenced to decease aft being convicted of first-degree execution and conspiracy to perpetrate execution successful the 2001 shooting decease of her hubby Robert Andrew astatine their Oklahoma City home. Her convicted co-conspirator and paramour, beingness security cause James Pavatt, was besides sentenced to death. 

Prosecutors during her proceedings presented grounds that she sought to payment from her husband's $800,000 beingness security argumentation that Pavatt had helped arrange. She has denied immoderate relation successful her husband's murder.

Brenda and Robert Andrew, who had 2 children together, were separated astatine the clip of his death. 

Brenda Andrew has said that portion her hubby was trying to assistance her airy the furnace successful the store of their home, 2 masked men entered and changeable him 2 times with a shotgun. She sustained a tiny caliber gunshot coiled to her arm. 

Emergency responders who arrived aft she called the 911 exigency fig were incapable to revive her husband, who had suffered extended humor loss, according to tribunal records.

Brenda Andrew and Pavatt were convicted successful abstracted trials of conspiring and carrying retired Robert's execution and were each sentenced to death. Pavatt remains connected Oklahoma's decease row. 

Prosecutors presented what they described arsenic "overwhelming grounds that Andrew and Pavatt plotted the execution of Robert aft seeking to summation power of Robert's beingness security policy."

At her trial, Brenda Andrew's lawyers sought to undermine the charges against her by establishing her lasting arsenic a bully mother, an assertion prosecutors sought to rebut. Her lawyers assertion that prosecutors and the proceedings justice violated her law rights by allowing jurors to spot "a passel of irrelevant grounds and statement capitalizing connected sex-based stereotypes."

Prosecutors presented grounds that Brenda Andrew had worn revealing covering to a edifice and that a lawsuit had called her a "hoochie," that her hubby recovered caller lingerie that helium ne'er saw her wear, that she had galore affairs during their engagement and marriage, and that she had coached their children to beryllium discreet astir her being visited by men astatine home.

Other grounds presented astatine the proceedings showed that Pavatt helped Robert Andrew acceptable up the beingness security argumentation anterior to his killing, and that Pavatt and Brenda Andrew forged the victim's signature connected a change-of-ownership form, according to tribunal records.

Pavatt's big girl testified that her begetter had told her that Brenda Andrew had asked Pavatt to termination Robert Andrew - a petition that occurred astir the aforesaid clip that the brake lines of Robert's car were cut. Afterward, Robert Andrew told Pavatt's brag that helium suspected that his woman and Pavatt were trying to termination him, and inquired astir removing her arsenic the beneficiary of his security policy.

Pavatt confessed to plotting and committing the execution without Brenda Andrew. 

In their entreaty to the Supreme Court, her lawyers noted that the prosecution presented "evidence astir her intersexual history, sex presentation, demeanor and motherhood." They wrote that "the grounds presented successful Ms. Andrew's lawsuit was not simply irrelevant, but was unfairly prejudicial successful ways that played connected sexist stereotyping."

"We are disappointed but respect the court's decision," the bureau of Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said successful a statement.