A photo of Amber McLaughlin provided by the Federal Office of Public Defenders. JEREMY S. WEIS / AP
An American on Tuesday January 3 became the first transgender person to be executed in the United States. Amber McLaughlin, 49, sentenced to death for the murder of her ex-girlfriend, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at Bonne Terre Penitentiary, Missouri (central), according to a statement at 6:51 p.m. local time.
According to local media, she remained on male death row. She was also the first person to be executed in the country in 2023.
Amber McLaughlin killed her ex-companion in a suburb of Saint-Louis, Missouri, before her transformation in 2003. She hadn’t supported their breakup and had been harassing her ever since, to the point that her ex-girlfriend had secured protective measures. But on the day of the crime, Amber McLaughlin was waiting for her outside work with a kitchen knife and raped and then stabbed her before dumping her body near the Mississippi River, according to local media.
At the end of her trial in 2006, the jury found her guilty of murder but could not agree on her sentence. A judge then decided to retain the death penalty. The states of Missouri and Indiana are the only ones that authorize their judges to issue death sentences if the popular jury does not reach a unanimous vote.
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Petition for clemency denied
Because of this peculiarity, Amber McLaughlin’s attorneys asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson to commute her sentence to life in prison. “The death penalty considered here does not reflect the conscience of the general public, but that of a single judge,” they write in their petition for clemency, which also refers to the difficult childhood and mental illnesses of their client.
Her proposal had the support of several figures, including two Missouri elected to the US Congress, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver. In a letter addressed to the governor, they recalled the abuse in their adoptive family when she was a child. “Alongside this horrific abuse, she has been quietly grappling with issues of gender identity (…)” they wrote.
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Since his election, Governor Mike Parson has not accepted any clemency petitions presented to him.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), which refers to it, no openly transgender person has yet been executed in the United States, “but the question [avait] has attracted attention in recent months with the Ohio Supreme Court’s affirmation of Victoria Drain’s death sentence and commutation of the death sentence of Tara Zyst in Oregon, two transgender women.”
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