Special to the Vanguard
In 2004, Brenda Andrew was sentenced to death, despite troubling gender bias shown by prosecutors throughout her trial.
This week, Fair and Just Prosecution joined an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to “uphold the integrity of our legal system and grant review of her case.
“A broad array of scholarship makes clear that the risk of prejudice at a capital trial…is just as great for gender bias as it is for racial bias. And here, the gender bias the prosecution injected into Ms. Andrew’s trial did not come in a ‘small dose,’” they argue
They add, “By capitalizing on deeply ingrained biases against women whose conduct deviates from the stereotype of an ideal wife and mother, prosecutors strategically turned the trial on Ms. Andrew’s guilt or innocence into a referendum on Ms. Andrew’s 
femininity and morality.”
From the Amici
Brenda Andrew’s capital murder prosecution was tainted with irrelevant and prejudicial evidence that spoke not to her criminal culpability, but to her failure to comply with society’s gender-biased expectations about how women should and should not behave.
Repeatedly, the prosecution elicited testimony designed to paint Ms. Andrew as a hypersexual seductress and an uncaring mother. The prosecution’s leitmotif of gender deviance was an implicit theme and an explicit exhortation at trial: because Ms. Andrew did not behave as a “virtuous” woman should, the jury should convict her and subject her to the harshest punishment possible.
By the time the case was submitted to the jury, the prosecution had deflected the jury’s focus from an inquiry into Ms. Andrew’s guilt or innocence to a referendum on Ms. Andrew’s femininity and morality.
Ms. Andrew’s case is an exceptional example of the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office weaponizing gender bias to poison proceedings against a female defendant who had no prior criminal record, in a case that involved no allegation of torture or exceptional cruelty.
This brief includes a portion of the trove of sexualizing evidence in Ms. Andrew’s trial, and presents scholarship demonstrating how prejudicial that evidence was.
Until these prosecutorial tactics are eradicated from American courtrooms, “[j]ustice is likely to remain a lottery while so much depends on the woman’s fulfillment of society’s expectations.”
Amici urge this Court to grant Ms. Andrew’s petition for a writ of certiorari.
When it comes to racial prejudice, this Court has recognized that “[t]he risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious.”
In referring to the use of a racial stereotype in a capital murder sentencing proceeding, the Court acknowledged that “[s]ome toxins can be deadly in small doses.”
A broad array of scholarship makes clear that the risk of prejudice at a capital trial—which is made irreparable by the “complete finality of the death sentence,” Turner, 476 U.S. at 35—is just as great for gender bias as it is for racial bias.
And here, the gender bias the prosecution injected into Ms. Andrew’s trial did not come in a “small dose.”
The prosecution’s case was dripping with inflammatory, irrelevant, and prejudicial evidence depicting Ms. Andrew as “a bad wife, a bad mother, and a bad woman.”
To fully appreciate the ability of this evidence to deprive Ms. Andrew of a fair trial, it must be placed in the context of scholarship that sheds light on the dangers gender bias poses to female defendants.
Full amicus brief here: link
