In January, America's highest judicial body handed the sole woman on Oklahoma's death row a chance to challenge her sentence and conviction.

However, it did so via a procedure which America's highest judicial body has otherwise largely ended. 

Court has a history of using summary reversals

According to The New York Times, convicted murderer Brenda Andrew benefited from something known as a summary reversal.

The Times noted how summary reversals are distinct from the rulings which justices issue in the wake of oral arguments as well as orders on emergency applications.

Instead, a summary reversal consists of an unsigned decision on the merits of a case that comes in response to briefs arguing over whether the matter should even be heard.

"We use them when a lower court decision is squarely contrary to one of our precedents," Justice Samuel Alito was quoted as saying of summary reversals during a 2021 speech at Notre Dame.

Number of summary reversals dropped after confirmation of Justice Barrett

Yet the Times pointed to a study which is soon to be published in the Columbia Law Review that noted a sharp decline in the prevalence of summary reversals.

The study recorded an average of seven summary reversals for each of the Supreme Court's terms since Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed in 2005.

That trend changed sharply over the past four terms, a period during which the justices released an average of only one summary reversal per term.

The study's authors suggested that this development is likely linked to Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the Supreme Court in late 2020.

Court found that woman's trial was tainted with sexual evidence

"For lower court decisions glaringly wrong in the eyes of the court’s conservative majority, Justice Barrett may be less inclined than her five Republican-appointed colleagues to provide a sixth vote to quickly erase them," the authors wrote.

In its most recent summary reversal, the justices concluded that Brenda Andrew's murder trial was tainted with evidence concerning her "sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife."

"The ultimate question is whether a fair-minded jurist could disagree that the evidence 'so infected the trial with unfairness’ as to render the resulting conviction or sentence ‘a denial of due process,'" the majority wrote.

The summary reversal contained a dissent from Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, who argued that since Andrews was accused of killing her husband, "sex and marriage were unavoidable issues" in her trial.