US May Execute First Openly Transgender Prisoner - He Was Convicted of a Haunting Crime
Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin will become the first openly transgender prisoner executed in the U.S. He is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for murdering a former girlfriend in 2003.
McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending.
The clemency request focuses on several issues, including McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard in his trial. A foster parent rubbed feces in his face when he was a toddler, and his adoptive father used a stun gun on him, according to the clemency petition. It says he suffers from depression and attempted suicide multiple times.
There is no known case of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center.
McLaughlin was in a relationship with girlfriend Beverly Guenther. McLaughlin would show up at the suburban St. Louis office where the 45-year-old Guenther worked, sometimes hiding inside the building, according to court records. Guenther obtained a restraining order, and police officers occasionally escorted her to her car after work.
Guenther’s neighbors called police the night of Nov. 20, 2003, when she failed to return home. Officers went to the office building, where they found a broken knife handle near her car and a trail of blood. A day later, McLaughlin led police to a location near the Mississippi River in St. Louis, where the body had been dumped.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury deadlocked on the sentence. A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021.
Nationally, 18 people were executed in 2022, including two in Missouri. Kevin Johnson was put to death Nov. 29 for the ambush killing of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Carmen Deck was executed in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri.
Another Missouri inmate, Leonard Taylor, is scheduled to die Feb. 7 for killing his girlfriend and her three young children.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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