When the Supreme Court last year revived an Oklahoma death row prisoner's claim that prosecutors tainted her trial with inflammatory, sexist arguments, the ruling initially appeared to focus on a narrow dispute over when courts must grant federal habeas corpus relief.

But though that prisoner, Brenda Andrew, was again denied relief on remand earlier this year, the court's short, unsigned Jan. 21, 2025, opinion in Andrew v. White is already being invoked in a growing range of cases alleging that prejudice, bias or fundamentally unfair tactics tainted criminal proceedings.

At Andrew's 2004 capital murder trial for the killing of her estranged husband, Rob Andrew, prosecutors repeatedly emphasized evidence that had little to do with the killing itself but portrayed her as sexually promiscuous, morally suspect and unfit as a mother.

Jurors heard about her affairs, clothing, appearance and personal relationships, including testimony about her thong underwear and sexually explicit exchanges. Andrew's lawyers later argued the material was meant to inflame the jury rather than prove guilt.

After her conviction in state court, Andrew raised the issue in federal habeas proceedings, arguing that the cumulative effect of the prosecution's characterization of her deprived her of a fundamentally fair trial, in violation of the due process clause of the Constitution. The Tenth Circuit rejected the claim, concluding that no "clearly established" Supreme Court precedent specifically addressed the type of prejudice Andrew alleged, a critical limitation under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, or AEDPA, which sharply restricts when federal courts may overturn state convictions.

The Supreme Court disagreed. Pointing to the court's 1991 ruling Payne v. Tennessee, the justices said the due process clause protects against evidence or argument that is "so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair," even when later cases involve materially different facts.

"When this court relies on a legal rule or principle to decide a case, that principle is a 'holding' of the court for purposes of AEDPA," the court said in that opinion. 

The significance of the ruling quickly extended beyond Andrew's own case. The decision reinforced a broader principle in federal habeas law: that constitutional rules spelled out in prior Supreme Court decisions like Payne can still qualify as "clearly established law" under AEDPA even when a later case presents different facts.

Since it was issued, the ruling has been cited in well over 100 judicial decisions nationwide involving habeas corpus claims and allegations that prejudice or unfairness compromised criminal proceedings, according to Shepard's Citations data reviewed by Law360.

That aspect of the decision has since drawn attention from lawyers and judges handling a wide range of claims involving prejudice, bias and trial fairness.

Jeffrey Bellin, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School teaching criminal law and evidence, described the impact of the ruling as a "fascinating topic" in an email to Law360.

Federal rules of evidence say judges "may" exclude evidence if it is unfairly prejudicial or could potentially mislead a jury. In his casebook titled "The Law of Evidence," Bellin wrote that the Andrew v. White ruling creates a "constitutional backstop" to those rules.

But while the right is broadly applicable, Bellin wrote, it is likely that lower courts will find due process violations only in scenarios involving the admission of extremely prejudicial evidence with little or no relevance.

"What I expect to see going forward is that litigants will frequently raise due process challenges to the admission of evidence, citing Andrew v. White, but that these challenges will rarely be successful," Bellin said in the email.

Data on decisions seems to bear that out. Most courts citing Andrew have ultimately rejected relief, though some have relied on the ruling in granting or seriously considering habeas claims involving prejudice or trial fairness.

Courts disagree about how far the decision actually reaches. Some have treated the ruling as a narrow correction tied to the unusually prejudicial evidence alleged in Andrew's own prosecution. Others have read it more broadly, viewing it as guidance on how federal courts should approach claims of prejudice and fundamental unfairness in habeas litigation.

In other cases yet, the ruling has been applied in contexts such as jury selection and the exclusion of evidence that would have been helpful to a criminal defendant that are significantly different from the due process concern at play in Andrew's case.

Laurie L. Levenson, a professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said the Andrew v. White ruling provides "a glimmer of hope" to people who wish to pursue due process claims. At the same time, she cautioned not to read the ruling "too expansively."

"It does offer an avenue for due process claims, and we haven't seen that for a while," she said.

The path to habeas corpus relief has been increasingly restricted in recent years, if not decades. Rulings in Nevada v. Jackson in 2013 and Lopez v. Smith in 2014 reinforced the Supreme Court's modern view that federal habeas relief under AEDPA is supposed to be extremely limited, especially when lower courts rely on broad constitutional principles rather than highly fact-specific Supreme Court precedent.

Eve Primus, a professor and habeas scholar at the University of Michigan Law School, said judges who believe prejudicial evidence compromised the integrity of a trial, and who are inclined to grant habeas relief, may now rely on Andrew v. White to argue that AEDPA does not require a prior Supreme Court case involving the exact same type of evidence.

Instead, they can point to the court's broader constitutional principles as sufficiently "clearly established" to support relief.

"Andrew v. White sort of opened the door a little bit to having a slightly more humane view of the doctrine that enables some people to get relief if their trials were fundamentally unfair," Primus said.

The ruling's most likely applications will come in cases involving allegations of prejudice that give rise to fundamental unfairness, she said.

But it could come up in other contexts, too, for example in cases implicating the confrontation clause, jury selection, Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and beyond, she said.

"If what you have is the United States Supreme Court precedent that establishes a general legal principle in a holding and the case before the judge is slightly different factually but they believe that principle is fundamental enough that it should apply to that circumstance as well, they're likely to cite Andrew v. White."

Recent decisions show how broadly litigants have invoked the ruling across different kinds of criminal procedure disputes.

Where the Ruling has Surfaced: Prejudice Tainting Juries

Andrew began as a case about gendered evidence, but litigants and courts are now invoking it in disputes involving many different kinds of alleged prejudice and trial unfairness.

One of the clearest examples of the ruling surfacing outside the context of gender stereotypes came in a Delaware sexual assault case involving concerns about immigration prejudice and inflammatory testimony.

In State v. Ramirez, Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig A. Karsnitz ordered a new trial after concluding several statements introduced before the jury risked improperly influencing the proceedings.

Fidel Chamorro Ramirez had been convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl who lived in his household when he was 18.

Because there was no physical or other forensic evidence of the rape, the jury's decision relied on the credibility of five witnesses: the victim, her mother, her stepfather and Delaware state troopers Riley Parker and Derek Adams.

At trial, Adams testified about Ramirez mentioning the word "deportation" through a translation app he was using to communicate with the officer. Judge Karsnitz immediately interrupted the testimony and told attorneys of both parties during a sidebar meeting that he was going to strike the statement from the record.

"I don't want anything about deportation. I think that brings in issues of all sorts of things. I am concerned that it was even testified to at this point in time," the judge said, according to an excerpt of a trial transcript he included in his opinion.

Later on in the trial, the victim's stepfather testified that Ramirez was a liar and that he was "using drugs — a lot."

Judge Karsnitz offered the defense the opportunity to move for a mistrial, but Ramirez chose to continue the proceedings and a jury convicted him of rape. Although the court instructed jurors to disregard the statements, the judge later concluded the cumulative effect of the testimony threatened the fairness of the proceedings and granted a new trial in the "interest of justice."

Citing Andrew v. White, Judge Karsnitz concluded that the statements about deportation and drug use "so infected the trial with unfairness as to render the resulting conviction a denial of due process."

"The current cultural, political, and social discussion raging about undocumented immigrants in the United States and the state of Delaware gives me great pause about the effect of Trooper Adams' statement on the jurors," the judge said.

Bias in Jury Selection

The Andrew ruling also has surfaced in disputes involving jury composition and structural fairness rather than inflammatory evidence itself.

In Overby v. Wetzel, a federal magistrate judge recommended granting habeas relief to a Pennsylvania death row prisoner after concluding prospective jurors had been improperly excluded because they had incarcerated family members.

Lamont Overby, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of John James Jr., had argued in a habeas corpus petition that his rights under the Sixth and 14th amendments were violated. He said the court had improperly excluded potential jurors as if they were part of a group — people with justice system-involved family members — and the appellate counsel had been ineffective for failing to raise that claim on direct appeal.

Overby then claimed the Pennsylvania Superior Court compounded the error by requiring him to prove actual prejudice from the exclusion of potential jurors.

He cited the Supreme Court ruling in Peters v. Kiff, which recognized that the exclusion from jury service of an identifiable group can undermine the fairness and legitimacy of the trial process in ways that are both widespread and difficult to detect. In challenging bias in jury exclusion, he added, "proof of actual harm, or lack of harm, is virtually impossible to adduce."

The commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on the other hand, argued in its briefs that Peters was essentially a ruling addressing racial discrimination that only applied to the specific facts of that case.

In December 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied Overby relief, saying he had failed to prove prejudice, and again refused to hear his case the following year. Exhaustion of remedies in state court paved the way for Overby's habeas corpus case.

On Jan. 29, 2025, eight days after Andrew v. White came down, Overby wrote the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to inform it that the ruling helped him in his case. Overby argued that Andrew rejected an overly narrow view of AEDPA and reaffirmed that broad constitutional principles from Supreme Court holdings, such as its ruling in Peters, can still constitute "clearly established federal law" even when applied to new factual settings.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Pamela A. Carlos found the argument persuasive. The judge cited the holding in Andrew that "general legal principles can constitute clearly established law for purposes of AEDPA so long as they are holdings of this court" and found that Supreme Court precedent, including the Peters ruling, supported granting relief to Overby.

"The commonwealth hides behind AEDPA's exceedingly deferential standard of review and a technical reading of U.S. Supreme Court precedent," she wrote in a footnote.

"Habeas relief is due," she then concluded.

Disputes Over Excluded Evidence

In other cases, courts have cited Andrew in disputes involving the exclusion of defense evidence and concerns that jurors were presented with a distorted picture of witness credibility.

In Chandler v. Brown, a panel of the Sixth Circuit granted habeas relief to a Michigan man, Louis Chandler, convicted of sexually assaulting a foster child. The panel concluded that state courts violated his constitutional rights by preventing him from presenting evidence that the child, a girl only named as A.C. who was 8 years old at the time, had a documented history of false allegations.

Chandler's attorneys argued that A.C. had a recurring pattern: Shortly after learning foster families intended to adopt her, she would accuse them of abuse in an effort to get removed and potentially reunited with her biological parents.

The attorneys sought records, witnesses and expert testimony showing the child previously made unsubstantiated abuse claims and had been described by foster-care officials as having a "history of false allegations." But the trial court blocked significant portions of that evidence, denied requests for additional preparation time and prevented numerous witnesses from testifying.

The Sixth Circuit ultimately concluded those restrictions violated the defendant's constitutional right to present a complete defense. Citing Andrew v. White, the panel said AEDPA does not require a case to involve an identical factual pattern before courts may apply a Supreme Court rule.

"The state may not defeat Chandler's constitutional claim simply because it is premised on new facts," the panel wrote.

Brady Claims and Trial Fairness

Some of the strongest parallels to Andrew have appeared in cases involving prosecutorial misconduct.

In Holberg v. Guerrero, the Fifth Circuit reversed a Texas death row prisoner's conviction after concluding prosecutors failed to disclose that a critical witness was a paid confidential informant, in violation of the rules the Supreme Court established in its 1963 landmark ruling in Brady v. Maryland.

In an opinion penned by U.S. Circuit Judge Patrick Higginbotham, a three-judge panel described the prosecution of Brittany Holberg, who was convicted of capital murder for the 1996 killing of 80-year-old A.B. Towery Sr. in Amarillo, Texas, as one shaped by a highly charged narrative surrounding her personal life, addiction and sex work.

Prosecutors relied heavily on testimony from a jailhouse witness who claimed that Holberg — whose childhood and adolescence were marked by repeated sexual abuse — described the killing in graphic and remorseless terms.

But jurors were never told the witness had worked extensively as a paid informant for law enforcement and received benefits connected to her cooperation.

The Fifth Circuit concluded the state's failure to disclose that information violated Brady and undermined confidence in the verdict.

"Ms. Holberg's 27 years on death row is a showcase of the state's failure to abide by a core structure of prosecution: the Brady doctrine," the opinion said.

The panel pointed to Andrew v. White in discussing how broadly framed constitutional rules can apply in new factual settings.

In the footnotes of the opinion, the panel noted that the same constitutional principle the Supreme Court said constituted clearly established law in Andrew's case, which involved the introduction of irrelevant and prejudicial evidence, could also be applied to Holberg's claims, which centered on the state's failure to produce evidence.

"Here, the non-admission of evidence at trial is itself a violation of the Constitution," the panel wrote. "This is not a case of a court's self-judgment of evidence. Instead, this is a case of withheld evidence, and the ability of defense counsel — armed with this evidence — to effectively argue its case to the jury."

--Editing by Tim Ruel.

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