Oklahoma's highest criminal court has set a November 12 execution date for James D. Pavatt, the 72-year-old former life insurance agent condemned for the 2001 shotgun killing of Oklahoma City advertising executive Robert D. Andrew, a murder prosecutors say was carried out as part of a murder-for-hire plot tied to an $800,000 life insurance policy. Pavatt has long denied guilt in the case, even as the state moves toward what would be Oklahoma's fourth execution of 2026.
According to Oklahoma Voice, Rob Andrew, 39, was shot in the garage of the family's Oklahoma City home after going there to pick up his and Brenda Andrew's two children, per prosecutors. At the time, Robert and Brenda Andrew were going through a divorce, and prosecutors alleged that Brenda Andrew and Pavatt, who was having an affair with her according to news reports, were behind the killing. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has now scheduled Pavatt to die by lethal injection on November 12, 2026, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
Pavatt confessed to shooting Rob Andrew with a 16-gauge shotgun but has maintained that Brenda Andrew was not involved, according to the Death Penalty Information Center — a claim that directly contradicts the joint execution plot prosecutors presented to jurors. An Oklahoma County jury convicted Pavatt on September 16, 2003, following a three-week trial, according to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, recommending a death sentence for first-degree murder along with a 10-year sentence and $5,000 fine on a related conspiracy count. The trial judge formally imposed the death sentence on October 21, 2003.
A Sunday School Connection and an Insurance Policy
Pavatt and Brenda Andrew met while teaching Sunday school together at an Oklahoma City church, the appeals court's ruling states. Pavatt, a life insurance agent who divorced his own wife in the summer of 2001, helped place an $800,000 policy on Rob Andrew and attempted to alter its ownership documents before the killing — details prosecutors pointed to as evidence of financial motive.
The plot against Rob Andrew did not begin with the shooting. Weeks earlier, on October 26, 2001, the brake lines on his car were severed and he received a deceptive phone call luring him to drive, according to the same appeals court record. Andrew survived that attempt and reported a murder plot involving his wife and Pavatt to Oklahoma City police, though he was unsuccessful in changing the beneficiary on his $800,000 policy before he was killed weeks later.
After the killing, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico with the children before they were apprehended, according to news reports cited by the same court record. Brenda Andrew was tried separately from Pavatt and also received the death penalty, making her, at 62, the only woman on Oklahoma's death row. She remains incarcerated at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, a women's prison in McLoud, where she has been held since her 2004 conviction, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Years of Appeals and a Shifting Execution Calendar
Pavatt's path to a new execution date has stretched across more than two decades of appellate litigation. A Tenth Circuit panel overturned his death sentence in June 2017 after finding insufficient evidence the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, but the full Tenth Circuit reinstated the sentence in a 10–3 decision in June 2019, per Wikipedia. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his final appeal in January 2020.
Pavatt was previously scheduled for execution on July 11, 2024, but that date was stayed after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals approved a state request to extend the required interval between executions to 90 days. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond had successfully petitioned the court to widen execution intervals, first from 30 to 60 days in 2023 and then to 90 days in 2024, citing severe mental and emotional trauma on Department of Corrections execution staff. As of this month, Pavatt is one of 13 death row inmates nationwide scheduled for execution during 2026 across seven states, according to Wikipedia.
Brenda Andrew's Case Still Unresolved
Brenda Andrew is still appealing her death penalty, and her case has become entangled in a separate constitutional fight even as Pavatt's execution date moves forward. In January 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered federal courts to review whether prosecutors unconstitutionally biased her trial by displaying her thong underwear and emphasizing her sexual history in front of jurors, as reported by Courthouse News. A Tenth Circuit panel re-affirmed her conviction in January 2026, and the full appellate court denied a rehearing this month, though her legal team plans to appeal back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hunter S. Labovitz has said this case should not be scheduled for execution given the material questions yet to be answered, according to Oklahoma Voice's reporting. That objection underscores the unresolved legal disputes still surrounding the broader case, even as the state prepares to carry out Pavatt's sentence for the killing of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive whose death set off a quarter-century of litigation involving two co-defendants, two separate trials, and a shifting execution calendar in Oklahoma.
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