Brenda Andrew

The backstory

Background

Brenda and Rob Andrew were married, with two children, and lived in Oklahoma City.¹⁸ Rob Andrew was 39, an advertising executive.⁸ According to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Brenda Andrew met James Pavatt at church, where they taught Sunday school together, and the two began a sexual relationship.¹ Pavatt, a life insurance agent, had helped Rob Andrew set up a Prudential life insurance policy worth about $800,000.¹ Rob Andrew moved out in late September 2001, and she started divorce proceedings shortly after.¹

Before the shooting

Pavatt’s adult daughter testified that in late October 2001 her father told her Brenda Andrew had asked him to murder her husband.¹ On the night of Oct. 25–26, someone cut the brake lines on Rob Andrew’s car. The next morning, the court wrote, Pavatt had his daughter call Rob Andrew from a phone that could not be traced and tell him his wife was in a hospital in Norman and needed him; an unknown man made the same plea. Rob Andrew found the tampering before he was harmed and reported it to police.¹ He later told police and others that his wife and Pavatt were trying to kill him, and he asked about removing her as the policy’s beneficiary.¹

The state presented evidence that she and Pavatt forged Rob Andrew’s signature on a form, backdated to March 2001, changing the policy’s ownership. A witness testified that she said she could sign her husband’s name “better than he could.”¹ About a week before the shooting, Pavatt bought a .22-caliber handgun, which was never found. A witness testified that he saw Brenda Andrew at a rural target-practice area in Garfield County eight days before the murder, and he later found 16-gauge shells there.¹

The shooting

On the evening of Nov. 20, 2001, Rob Andrew came to the house to pick up the children for a Thanksgiving visit. According to the court, his wife asked him into the garage to light the furnace pilot.¹ By her account, two masked men came in, Rob Andrew was shot in the abdomen, grabbed a bag of aluminum cans and was shot again, and the second shot hit her.¹ She called 911. Rob Andrew was found dead on the garage floor, shot twice with a shotgun. In a second 911 call, about five minutes after the shooting, she said he was breathing, conscious and trying to talk, and the medical examiner testified that his death would not have been instantaneous.¹ The children were in a bedroom watching television with the volume up and did not know what had happened.¹

Brenda Andrew had a superficial wound to her arm from a .22-caliber bullet. The state’s evidence was that it was fired at close range, inconsistent with her account, and an expert testified that the wound was not self-inflicted but part of a staged scene.¹³ Several witnesses described her as “uncharacteristically calm,” the court wrote.¹ Police found a spent 16-gauge shell in the garage. Rob Andrew owned a 16-gauge shotgun but had told friends his wife refused to let him take it; it was never found.¹

Pavatt had borrowed his daughter’s car that day. She testified that she later found a .22 round on the floorboard and that he threatened her and told her never to repeat what he had said about Brenda Andrew’s request.¹ Brenda Andrew had a key to a neighboring house whose owners were away. Police found signs that someone had entered its attic, a 16-gauge shell on a bedroom floor and .22 rounds in the attic; the court wrote that the ammunition matched the brand of, or was consistent with, the rounds from the car and the garage.¹

Flight

After the shooting, according to the court, she asked Pavatt’s daughter to help prepare a forged document letting the children travel with her and to move money from her account, while Pavatt researched Argentina because it had no extradition agreement with the United States.¹ She did not attend her husband’s funeral. She, Pavatt and the children went to Mexico within days, and they were arrested trying to re-enter the United States in late February 2002.¹³

The trial

Andrew and Pavatt were charged together, and their trials were severed; Pavatt was tried first, in 2003.²⁶ Her trial, before Judge Susan W. Bragg in Oklahoma County District Court, took place in June and July 2004.¹ The state’s case that she took part was circumstantial.¹⁴ A federal inmate held with her in the county jail testified that Andrew said she and Pavatt killed her husband “for the money, the kids, and each other,” and that Pavatt shot her in the arm to make her look like a victim.¹ Her defense, according to her current lawyers, argued that Pavatt alone was responsible, relying in part on a confession he had signed.⁶ Pavatt now denies guilt, and his lawyers say prosecutors at her trial argued that she was the shooter.¹¹¹²

The state also presented evidence about her earlier affairs with two other men, her clothing and her conduct as a wife and mother.¹⁴ One of the men testified that she told him she hated her husband and wished he were dead.¹ Witnesses described her dress as “provocative,” and one called her a “hoochie”; a prosecutor asked whether she had come on to a former partner’s sons.⁶¹ The prosecution showed the jury thong underwear from the luggage she took to Mexico and, in closing, asked whether a “grieving widow” would pack it.⁶¹⁶ The trial judge admitted some of the evidence “only as it relate[d] to her ability to manipulate men,” Judge Richard Federico of the Tenth Circuit later wrote.⁵ The jury convicted her of first-degree murder and conspiracy.¹

Why the jury chose death

The state alleged three aggravating circumstances. The jury found two, listed in full below: that the murder was committed for remuneration, and that it was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. It did not find that she would be a continuing threat to society.¹ It recommended death for the murder and 10 years and a $5,000 fine for conspiracy, and the judge imposed those sentences on Sept. 22, 2004.¹

The jury was instructed on the mitigating circumstances the defense offered: that she had no criminal history or past violence; that she “is a good mother, who loves her children very much”; that a death sentence would deprive her children of their only living parent; that her family loves her and would visit her; that she was a kind neighbor and friend, a hard-working employee, active in school and church, and a model inmate in the county jail; and that her education might let her help other inmates.¹ The opinions reviewed do not name the penalty-phase witnesses or summarize their testimony. Her lawyers say the state questioned penalty-phase witnesses about whether she was a good mother and about her affairs, and argued in closing that she was “not like you and me” and “deserves that different kind of punishment.”⁶

The direct appeal

The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in 2007, in an opinion by Judge Lewis.¹ It held that her affair with one of the men was admissible to show motive and intent. Of other testimony, such as her dress and hair color, the court wrote that it was “struggling to find any relevance” beyond her character, but found the error harmless given the evidence of guilt.¹³ It found that the exclusion of some defense witnesses for discovery violations was an abuse of discretion but harmless.¹ It held that the “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” aggravator was supported because Rob Andrew was conscious for several minutes after the second shot, and in its mandatory review found that “the jury’s verdict was not born under the influence of passion, prejudice or any other arbitrary factor.”¹

Two of the five judges would have granted relief. Judge Chapel would have reversed for a new trial. Judge Arlene Johnson agreed the evidence of guilt was overwhelming but wrote that “the second stage of Brenda Andrew’s trial was fundamentally unfair,” citing closing remarks on the testimony of the couple’s 13-year-old daughter and on victim-impact statements, and would have ordered a new sentencing.¹ Presiding Judge Lumpkin, concurring in the result, called it “an unusually strong evidentiary case, which leaves little or no doubt that Appellant is guilty.”¹

Federal habeas and the Supreme Court

The Court of Criminal Appeals denied postconviction relief in 2008, and a federal district court denied habeas relief in 2015.⁶ In March 2023 a divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed, holding that no clearly established Supreme Court law supported her due-process claim against the evidence.⁶ Judge Gregory Phillips wrote for the majority that her trial was “fundamentally fair, and that is all she was entitled to”; Judge Robert Bacharach, dissenting, wrote that the prosecution portrayed her as “a modern Jezebel.”¹⁹

On Jan. 21, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that decision in an unsigned opinion. It held that when the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled, clearly established law, including Payne v. Tennessee, already provided that “the Due Process Clause forbids the introduction of evidence so unduly prejudicial as to render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair.”⁴ It sent the case back for the Tenth Circuit to decide whether a fair-minded jurist could disagree that the evidence was unduly prejudicial, separately for the guilt and sentencing phases.⁴ Justice Alito concurred in the judgment, expressing “no view” on whether the standard was met. Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented.⁴¹⁷

On remand

The Tenth Circuit heard argument in Oklahoma City in June 2025.¹⁹ On Jan. 13, 2026, in an opinion by Judge Bacharach, the panel again upheld the denial of relief.⁷⁶ It concluded that “a fair-minded jurist could doubt infection of the trial with unfairness” and that “the alleged stereotyping did not substantially undermine the fundamental fairness of the trial.”¹⁵ It reasoned that the state appeals court could not be faulted for not considering evidence she had not challenged there, and it found the evidence of guilt and of the aggravators overwhelming.¹⁵⁵

On Aug. 14, 2026, the court denied rehearing; a poll of the full court did not carry. Judge Federico dissented, writing that “no federal court has so narrowly confined federal habeas review to the specific record citations” in state-court briefs and that “these were not stray comments elicited in the heat of trial.”⁵¹⁴ Her Sept. 25 petition asks the Supreme Court to decide whether a federal court may review the whole record the state court reviewed, and how it must weigh prejudicial evidence against the jury’s penalty decision.⁶ Her death sentence remains in force.⁶

Personal backstory

Early life

Andrew was born and raised in Enid, Oklahoma, in a middle-class, devout Christian family, according to the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide, which advocates for her. The center describes her as a “quiet child who devoted time to her church and to helping others” and says she earned good grades.²⁰ It says a cousin described her caring for a brother with a severe mental impairment when they were children.²⁰ The court opinions reviewed do not describe her childhood.

Marriage and family

According to the Cornell center, she married Rob Andrew at 21 and moved with him to Texas for his work; they later returned to Oklahoma, where she became a stay-at-home mother after their two children were born.²⁰ It says a former employer testified that she had been named “Employee of the Year,” and that after her father’s death she was the “glue that held the family together.”²⁰ She taught Sunday school at the church where she met Pavatt, the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote.¹ She shared custody of the children with her husband after they separated, her lawyers say.⁶ She had no criminal record before the case, according to the Cornell center.²⁰

Mental health

No diagnosis or mental-health evidence appears in the sources reviewed.

Life on death row

Andrew has been on Oklahoma’s death row since 2004 and is the only woman there; the state itself described her in 2024 as “the only woman currently subject to a death sentence in the state.”³¹⁰¹⁸ She was 62 in August 2026, according to Oklahoma Voice.¹¹ She maintains her innocence.¹⁹¹⁸ The Cornell center says her Christian faith remains central to her.²⁰