Did Prosecutors’ Sex Shaming Help Send Brenda Andrew to Death Row?
During his closing argument in the 2004 murder trial of Brenda Andrew in Oklahoma, a prosecutor dangled her thong underwear before the jury. She had packed the undergarment for a trip to Mexico a few days after her estranged husband was killed.
The prosecutor, Gayland Gieger, said the item was strong evidence that Ms. Andrew had murdered her husband. “The grieving widow packs this to run off with her boyfriend,” he said, holding her underwear.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Can’t twist the facts, folks. Can’t twist the evidence.”
The spectacle “drew gasps from the crowded courtroom,” a local newspaper reported. The jury convicted Ms. Andrew and condemned her to death. She is the only woman on the state’s death row.
Later this month, the Supreme Court will consider whether to hear Ms. Andrew’s appeal, which said the display of her underwear was a representative part of an unrelenting strategy by prosecutors, as a dissenting judge put it, “of introducing evidence that has no purpose other than to hammer home that Brenda Andrew is a bad wife, a bad mother and a bad woman.”
Nathalie Greenfield, one of Ms. Andrew’s lawyers, said gender stereotypes infected the trial and poisoned the jury.
“Every single day the state was presenting gendered evidence about her appearance, about her clothing, about her sexual practices, about her skills as a mother,” she said. “We’ve got someone who is at risk of execution for not conforming to gender stereotypes.”