The first openly transgender woman to be executed in the US begs Missouri governor for mercy, citing mental health issues.
Lawyers for Amber McLaughlin, now 49, questioned the Republican governor on Monday. Mike Parson to forgive her.
McLaughlin was found guilty of killing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther on November 20, 2003. Guenther was raped and stabbed to death in St. Louis County.
According to the Anti-Execution Death Penalty Information Center, there have been no known cases of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the United States before.
“It’s wrong when anyone gets executed anyway, but I hope this is the first time it hasn’t happened,” said federal public defender Larry Komp. “Amber has shown great courage in embracing who she is as a transgender woman despite the possibility of people reacting with hatred, so I admire her display of courage.”
McLaughlin’s attorneys cited her traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury had never heard of, in their clemency petition. An adoptive parent rubbed feces on her face when she was a baby, and her adoptive father touched her, according to her letter to Parson. She attempted suicide several times, both as a child and as an adult.
Parson’s spokeswoman Kelli Jones said the governor’s office is reviewing her clemency request. “These are not decisions the governor takes lightly,” Jones said in an email.
Komp said McLaughlin’s attorneys would meet with Parson on Tuesday.
A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury failed to decide on death or life without parole.
A federal judge in St. Louis ordered a grievance hearing in 2016, citing concerns about the effectiveness of McLaughlin’s trial attorneys and faulty jury instructions. But in 2021, a federal appeals court reinstated the death penalty.
McLaughlin’s attorneys also cited jury indecision and McLaughlin’s remorse as reasons Parson should spare her life.
Missouri has executed only one woman before, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email.
McLaughlin’s lawyers said she previously shared a room with another transgender woman but is now living in solitary confinement ahead of her scheduled execution date.
Pojmann said that 9 percent of Missouri’s prison population are women and that all of the capital’s inmates are incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center.
“It is extremely unusual for a woman to commit a capital crime, such as brutal murder, and even more unusual for a woman, as in McLaughlin’s case, to rape and kill a woman,” Pojmann said.
Missouri has executed two men this year. Kevin Johnson, a 37-year-old man convicted of ambushing and killing a St. Louis area police officer he blamed for the death of his younger brother, was executed last month. Carmen Deck died by injection in May of killing James and Zelma Long during a burglary at their home in De Soto, Missouri, in 1996.
