Only woman on Oklahoma’s death row loses
Court upholds her murder conviction
Death row inmate Brenda Andrew moved a step closer to execution Tuesday when a federal appeals court upheld her murder conviction despite misgivings about “sexual” evidence admitted at her 2004 trial.
Andrew, now 59, was convicted in the fatal shooting of her estranged husband at their Oklahoma City home in 2001. She is the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row.
The decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver was 2-1.
“It is evident that Ms. Andrew’s trial was not perfect. But it is just as evident that her trial was fundamentally fair, and that is all she was entitled to,” Circuit Judge Gregory Phillips wrote for the majority.
The judge pointed out 10 times in the 88-page majority opinion that the evidence of her guilt was overwhelming.
Her lover, James Pavatt, already has exhausted his appeals. His execution is now set for July 11, 2024, but will be rescheduled.
Pavatt, now 69, was convicted at a separate trial in 2003.
Pavatt, an insurance salesman, and Brenda Andrew became lovers after meeting at church, according to testimony at the trials. They even taught a Sunday school class together.
Pavatt had been friends with her husband, Rob Andrew. He assisted Rob Andrew in setting up a life insurance policy worth $800,000.
The Andrews’ 17-year marriage fell apart in 2001, with her filing for divorce and him moving out.
On Nov. 20, 2001, Rob Andrew came to the family home to pick up his son and daughter for Thanksgiving. He came into the garage after Brenda Andrew told him the pilot light on the furnace was out.
There, he was shot twice, first by Pavatt and then by his wife, with his own 16-gauge shotgun, prosecutors alleged. Pavatt also shot Brenda Andrew in the arm with a .22-caliber pistol to make it look like she was a victim, too, prosecutors alleged.
Rob Andrew was 39. Brenda Andrew told police two armed, masked men had attacked her husband. Police later found evidence that Pavatt hid afterward in the attic of the home of the Andrews’ next-door neighbors, who were away.
As police suspicions about her story grew, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with her children. After running out of money, the couple reentered the United States in February 2002. They were arrested at the border.
At her formal sentencing, she maintained she is innocent and predicted she would be vindicated
“God knows my heart,” she said. “He will deliver me out of this situation.”
She raised 10 issues at the federal appeals court in her challenge of her conviction and sentence.
The most sensational is her claim that jurors should not have heard about her sex life, particularly about her other affairs. Among the evidence introduced against her was a book found by police
in her home, “203 Ways to Drive a Man Wild in Bed.”
In a 55-page dissent, Circuit Judge Robert Bacharach wrote prosecutors focused from start to finish on her sex life.
“This focus portrayed Ms. Andrew as a scarlet woman, a modern Jezebel, sparking distrust based on her loose morals,” he wrote. “The drumbeat on Ms. Andrew’s sex life continued in closing argument, plucking away any realistic chance that the jury would seriously consider her version of events.”
The two judges who voted to uphold the conviction acknowledged in a footnote to the majority opinion that they had concerns “about some of the ‘sexual and sexualizing’ evidence admitted at trial, and the use to which it was put by the government.”
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals upheld her conviction in 2007 despite “struggling” to find any relevance to some of the sexual evidence.
Brenda Andrew will have exhausted her appeals if the U.S. Supreme Court also rules against her.
Oklahoma has executed only three women since statehood, according to historical records. All three were put to death by lethal injection in 2001 for murder.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals already has rescheduled seven lethal injections after the new attorney general said “the current pace of executions is unsustainable in the long run.”
Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the court to give the Oklahoma Department of Corrections 60 days between executions rather than 30 “to alleviate the burden on DOC personnel.”
The Court of Criminal Appeals said it will address the dates for the remaining executions “at an appropriate time in the future.”