On April 1, 2024, writing in the New York Times, Adam Liptak told the story of Brenda Andrew, whose petition for certiorari is pending before the Supreme Court. The article was headlined “Did Prosecutors’ Sex Shaming Help Send Branda Andrew to Death Row?” Liptak began with an account of the prosecutor’s summation in Andrew’s trial for the November 2001 murder of her estranged husband.
The prosecutor, Liptak reported, dangled the thong underwear that Andrew had packed for a trip to Mexico a few days after the murder, and argued to the jury that no “grieving widow packs this to run off with her boyfriend.” Although the prosecutor’s conduct was egregious, Andrew’s certiorari petition is likely to fail—to founder on the shoals of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), where federal habeas petitions go to die.
