Amber McLaughlin has been sentenced to death for murder, the sentencing is scheduled for this Tuesday the 3rd; she can still save herself if she is pardoned by the governor of the state of Missouri
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You US are on the verge of doing something unprecedented: the execution of a transgender person. Amber McLaughlin, 49, has been sentenced to death for murder, with sentencing scheduled for this Tuesday the 3rd in the state of Missouri in the central United States. She is responsible for a murder committed before her sex change operation. McLaughlin has to be given a lethal injection. However, there’s still a chance that won’t happen, as the state’s governor must grant him a pardon, but if that doesn’t happen, he will be the first transgender person of any gender to die from the death penalty in the country, and also the first person to be executed in 2023. Since taking office in 2018, Gov. Mike Parson has never granted a clemency petition. The crime McLaughlin is responsible for was committed 20 years ago when he killed an exgirlfriend in the suburbs of the city of Saint Louis. McLaughlin had not accepted the split and had already bullied his expartner for so long that she, known as Beverly Guenther, had to take protective measures in court.
On the day of the crime, McLaughlin awaited her outside work with a kitchen knife. Guenther was raped and stabbed, and her body was dumped in the Mississippi River. At the end of the trial in 2006, a jury found McLaughlin guilty of murder but could not agree on the verdict. The trial judge intervened and imposed the death penalty, which is legal in the states of Missouri and Indiana. Arguing that the jury did not sentence her to death, the defense asked 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, only that of a judge,” argued the attorneys in their clemency petition, which also points to McLaughlin’s troubled childhood and mental illness. His motion was supported by highprofile figures, including two members of the US House of Representatives from Missouri, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver.
In a letter to the governor, attorneys said McLaughlin’s adoptive father used to beat her with a club and also electrocuted her. “In addition to this horrific abuse, she has been quietly grappling with issues of gender identity,” they wrote. According to press reports, McLaughlin began her gender reassignment surgery in recent years but remained an inmate on the male ward of Missouri’s death row. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), which works to abolish this penalty in the United States, there is no record of the execution of an openly transgender person in the country. However, the issue has attracted more attention in recent months: The Ohio Supreme Court upheld a death sentence against a transgender woman and the state of Oregon, according to DPIC.
*With information from AFP