Earlier this week, the Supreme Court granted, vacated, and remanded the denial of habeas relief in a capital case from the Tenth Circuit. Andrew v. White, No. 23-6573 (Jan. 21, 2025).
The 7-2 per curiam ruling starts like this:
An Oklahoma jury convicted Brenda Andrew of murdering her husband, Rob Andrew, and sentenced her to death. The State spent significant time at trial introducing evidence about Andrew’s sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife, much of which it later conceded was irrelevant. In a federal habeas petition, Andrew argued that this evidence had been so prejudicial as to violate the Due Process Clause. The Court of Appeals rejected that claim because, it thought, no holding of this Court established a general rule that the erroneous admission of prejudicial evidence could violate due process. That was wrong. By the time of Andrew’s trial, this Court had made clear that when “evidence is introduced that is so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides a mechanism for
Justice Alito concurred separately:
I concur in the judgment because our case law establishes that a defendant’s due-process rights can be violated when the properly admitted evidence at trial is overwhelmed by a flood of irrelevant and highly prejudicial evidence that renders the trial fundamentally unfair. See Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 825 (1991); Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U. S. 1, 12 (1994); cf. Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U. S. 723, 726 (1963). I express no view on whether that very high standard is met here.
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented.
The full opinion is available here. Certiorari stage briefing is available on the Supreme Court’s website here.