When Brenda Andrew was on trial for homicide in 2004 in Oklahoma, a prosecutor named Fern Smith turned to the jury and held up Andrew’s thong and lace bra.
“The grieving widow packs this to run off together with her boyfriend,” Smith informed the jury sarcastically. “The grieving widow packs this in her acceptable act of grief.”
Andrew’s legal professionals would later say they have been too surprised by the presentation of the underwear to even object. However by then, it seemingly wouldn’t have mattered; Smith had devoted a major period of time to outlining Andrew’s intercourse life, questioning former lovers of hers on the stand. Andrew was ostensibly on trial for the homicide of her husband, Rob Andrew, however Smith wasn’t content material to show her guilt. The prosecutor additionally needed to persuade the jury that Andrew was, in Smith’s phrases, a “slut pet.”
Attacking girls on trial for prison offenses with additional accusations of immoral conduct is a standard phenomenon, traditionally and at present, domestically and globally. In 1994, a California girl named Mary Ellen Samuels was convicted of murdering her husband and the hit man she’d employed to kill him, after prosecutors launched parts of erotic letters despatched to Samuels through the years in addition to a nude {photograph} of the defendant. Extra just lately, Italian officers appeared desirous to advance proof that Amanda Knox’s habits following her roommate’s infamous homicide wasn’t what one would anticipate from a girl in her place: as an alternative of weeping and wailing, Knox appeared unaffected, and went on to purchase pink underwear and kiss a boyfriend afterward. When girls are accused of wrongdoing, their womanhood is commonly introduced into query as nicely. Andrew and her legal professionals have argued since 2007 that her case is an instance of that actual phenomenon—and on January 21, the Supreme Courtroom agreed, reversing a decrease court docket’s ruling towards Andrew, whose case will now return to the Tenth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals for reconsideration.
Capital punishment as an establishment in some methods goes simple on girls: Maybe as a result of girls are seen as comparatively weak and passive, male killers are sentenced to demise at a better price than feminine killers. Since 1976, solely 18 girls have been executed in america, in contrast with 1,589 males. In the present day, 51 girls are on demise row, in contrast with greater than 2,000 males.
However for these girls who do face capital sentencing, a selected form of drawback primarily based on their intercourse can come up: Though males are not often sentenced to demise primarily based on their deviation from masculine gender norms, many feminine defendants dealing with capital trials are derided by prosecutors for failures of femininity.
Andrew was convicted of luring her estranged husband into their storage beneath the false pretense of restarting her furnace’s pilot mild in November 2001, then collaborating in his deadly capturing together with her lover James Pavatt in hopes of claiming a life-insurance payout. Andrew steadfastly contends that she is harmless, however instantly after the killing, Pavatt and Andrew fled to Mexico with Andrew’s two youngsters; they have been apprehended upon their return to america, the place each have been charged with homicide. Pavatt’s trial got here six months forward of Andrew’s, and, in keeping with the capital-defense lawyer and creator Marc Bookman’s e-book, A Descending Spiral, it “previewed the trial towards her. Certainly, the proof towards him was in some ways an identical to that dealing with his co-defendant.” An Oklahoma jury sentenced Pavatt to demise, after which it was Andrew’s flip.
The prosecution offered two of Andrew’s former lovers as witnesses early on. The primary man, James Higgins, had had an affair with Andrew after assembly on the native Value Mart, the place Higgins was an assistant supervisor. When Smith prompted Higgins to elucidate the circumstances of his affair with Andrew, Higgins replied that Andrew had initiated the connection by “coming in dressed attractive”—sporting brief skirts and low-cut tops; in his telling, Andrew would “are available, speak, and form of rub up towards me and contact, and I imply, simply flirting …” As Higgins’s testimony progressed, Smith continued to ask questions that elicited proof implying that Andrew was sexually aggressive and adulterous. Higgins acknowledged, as an example, that when the 2 started sleeping collectively, Andrew virtually all the time paid for his or her motel rooms, and invited him to have intercourse in her automobile (versus his) a number of instances. Their relationship had ended years earlier than Andrew’s alleged crime. A former babysitter for Andrew’s youngsters additional testified that Andrew went out for groceries on one event sporting “a leather-based outfit” together with her hair “actually, actually large.”
Later, the prosecution known as Rick Nunley, a more moderen lover of Andrew’s, to the stand. “Does a very good mom take their youngsters and flee to Mexico, take them out of college and flee to Mexico, when their father is mendacity in a coffin in a funeral residence?” Smith requested him. “Not often,” Nunley conceded. “Does a very good mom invite her boyfriends over to the home with the kids within the residence after they’re nonetheless married to their father?” Smith then requested, as if her level hadn’t but been made. Alongside together with her marital infidelity, Andrew’s efficiency as a mom was offered as proof that she was a failure as a girl.
And if there was any doubt that Andrew’s sentencing was in some sense about her femininity, Smith made the purpose specific in her closing statements: Andrew “sits over right here in the present day, and has for the final 5 weeks, all meek and quiet and fairly. She’s a reasonably girl. And he or she’s been on her greatest habits. However that’s not the true Brenda Andrew.”
Capital trials by nature produce starkly opposing narratives about their topic. The juries are instructed to weigh statutorily outlined aggravating elements related to the homicide towards mitigating elements associated to the defendant’s qualities as an individual or the circumstances of the crime. Aggravating elements can embody, as an example, particular cruelty or atrocity, motives associated to pecuniary achieve, and the variety of victims; mitigating elements may embody diagnoses of psychological sickness or mental incapacity, or proof that the defendant’s function within the murder was minimal relative to a extra culpable occasion. It’s within the prosecution’s curiosity to current the worst model of the defendant to a jury—a kind of perverse incentive that may result in appeals to jurors’ deep-seated notions of what constitutes unhealthy conduct in society, no matter whether or not these notions are truthful. Given these circumstances, it could be surprising if capital punishment did not communicate to elemental prejudices—and the Supreme Courtroom was capable of see in Andrew’s case a troubling instance of that phenomenon. Andrew should still lose in the long term, however her victory on the Supreme Courtroom is a win for all American girls dealing with the demise penalty.