Death row inmate may get retrial due to claim of 'sex-shaming' prosecutors
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Oklahoma’s only female death row inmate, whose attorneys argue was “sex-shamed” during her husband’s murder trial, may have another day in court after a Tuesday Supreme Court ruling.

Brenda Andrew, now 61, was sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder of her estranged husband, Rob Andrew. 

She was convicted in the 2001 murder, along with her lover and fellow Sunday school teacher, James Pavatt. Pavatt, who had sold Rob Andrew an $800,000 life insurance policy, had confessed to killing Rob with a friend. He denied that Brenda was involved.

Brenda Andrew told police after the shooting, during which she was shot in the arm, that two masked men attacked her and her husband while he was helping her ignite the pilot light on the furnace in their garage, according to court documents reviewed by Fox News Digital.

Her attorneys argue that evidence about her “plainly irrelevant sexual history” wasn’t fair to use in court, where prosecutors called her a “slut puppy” and showed jurors one of her thongs, according to their court filings.

James Pavatt is pictured in a 2003 mugshot at left and a 2024 mugshot at right.

James Pavatt is pictured in a 2003 mugshot at left and a 2024 mugshot at right. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections)

“The evidence about her role in the murder was not enough to get the death penalty so [prosecutors} preyed on jurors‘ stereotypes of a ‘fallen woman’ and got them to despise her,” Lieberman said. “The prosecution’s so-called evidence was more prejudicial than probative… I think it was inappropriate personal hatred of the prosecutors toward her or inappropriate personal revenge or a personal desire to punish her more severely instead of just giving her life in prison.”

A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to reverse part of Pavatt’s death sentence in June 2017. They determined that Andrew’s husband died too quickly for his death to be considered “cruel and heinous,” an aggravating circumstance that allowed the state to issue him the death penalty, Oklahoma City’s KFOR reported

Andrew’s last appeal in 2008 was denied, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. 

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