SCOTUS Decision on Prosecutor Sexism Could Give Women New Trials

In January, the United States Supreme Court gave a boost to a female serving on Oklahoma's death row who claimed her 2004 conviction for murdering her estranged husband was tainted by what her lawyers called "sexist stereotyping" by prosecutors who presented to the jury evidence about her sex life and revealing clothing.

In Andrew v. White, the justices threw out a decision by the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting Brenda Andrew's claim that her right to due process under the U.S. Constitution was violated by the type of prosecution evidence admitted during her trial. Andrew was sentenced to death in Oklahoma after prosecutors introduced evidence about her sex life and her failings as a wife and mother. SCOTUS ordered the federal appeals court to assess whether this “irrelevant evidence about [her] demeanor as a woman … deprive[d] her of a fundamentally fair trial.”

"The state spent significant time at trial introducing evidence about Andrew's sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife, much of which it later conceded was irrelevant," the Supreme Court wrote.

Andrew's case will return to the 10th Circuit to assess whether her trial proceedings were fundamentally unfair under a legal standard that the Supreme Court clarified in its ruling.

"The prosecution invited the jury to convict and condemn Ms. Andrew to death because she was not a 'stereotypical' woman - her clothing was not modest enough, her demeanor was not emotional enough, and she was not chaste enough," Jessica Sutton, an attorney for Andrew, said in response to the ruling. "Wielding these gendered tropes to justify a conviction and punishment of death is intolerable and poses a threat to everyone who does not follow rigid gender norms," Sutton added.

Generally, women who commit murder are, in some way, often portrayed as an aberration of true womanhood, as either ‘bad’ or ‘mad’. Further, painting female defendants as hypersexual in order to attack their credibility is a shamefully common approach many prosecutors take to undermine their legal defense. Conversely, there is a considerable effort to downplay information that might contextualize or explain the female defendant's, especially if the situation is borne of a potential domestic violence situation, and the underlying social conditions that led to the crime are ignored.

California has more women on death row than any other state, and California prosecutors have used similar tactics going back decades.

This SCOTUS decision could open the door for a long overdue discussion about confronting gender stereotypes in the courtroom, and in the criminal justice system at large.

To read more about this case and the potential impact, read "Supreme Court Decision on Prosecutor Sexism Could Give Women New Trials" at The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization that envisions a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, create public safety.