As she stood trial for orchestrating her estranged husband’s 2001 murder, Brenda Andrew faced an uphill battle convincing an Oklahoma jury of her innocence. The evidence — ballistic, testimonial, and circumstantial — was stacked against her. A jailhouse informant even claimed Andrew had confessed to plotting with her boyfriend to gun down Robert Andrew and wound herself as part of staging a home invasion.

But perhaps the most powerful weapon in the prosecutors’ arsenal wasn’t the evidence itself — it was their ability to portray her as a deviant, unfaithful woman who deserved to be executed.

“What makes Brenda’s case unique, but what makes it emblematic of broader patterns of bias and oppression, is the focus on her character, and in particular the gendered aspects of her character,” Cornell Law School professor Sandra Babcock told Law360.

More than 20 years later, on January 21, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the prosecution’s use of sex-shaming and gender stereotyping in Andrew’s case prejudiced her jury, undermining her right to a fair trial.

Read the full story in Law360.