A Missouri inmate has been put to death for a 2003 killing, becoming what is believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the US.
Amber McLaughlin was put to death on Tuesday night, hours after the Republican governor of Missouri, Mike Parson, declined a clemency request. McLaughlin was convicted in 2006 of killing a former girlfriend in suburban St Louis in 2003.
The clemency request had focused on several issues, including McLaughlin’s severely traumatic childhood and serious mental health issues, which the jury never heard during her trial.
Two Missouri members of Congress, Democrats Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver, had been campaigning for McLaughlin’s sentence to be commuted and last week wrote to Parson urging him to scrap the execution.
They noted that McLaughlin, 49, was given the death sentence when the judge in the case made a unilateral decision after the jury deadlocked on her fate. The members of Congress complained about alleged shortcomings in her trial, including failure to include expert testimony and evidence on the defendant’s mental health.
They also condemned the death penalty in principle, calling executions a “moral depravity”.
“They are not about justice; they are about who has institutional power and who doesn’t. We urge you to correct these injustices using every tool available, including the power to grant clemency,” Bush and Cleaver wrote.
They further stated in the letter: “Ms McLaughlin’s cruel execution would mark the state’s first use of the death penalty on a woman since the US supreme court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and even worse it would not solve any of the systemic problems facing Missourians and people all across America, including anti-LGBTQ+ hate and violence, and cycles of violence that target and harm women. It would simply destroy yet another community while using the concepts of fairness and justice as a cynical pretext.”
There is no known case of an openly transgender person being executed in the US before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center.
McLaughlin underwent gender transition while incarcerated.
In 2003, long before transitioning, McLaughlin was in a relationship with Beverly Guenther. After they stopped dating, McLaughlin would appear at the suburban St Louis office where 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 on the night of 20 November 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 Guenther’s 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. Komp said Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow a judge, rather than a jury, to sentence someone to death.
A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021.
Jessica Hicklin, a transgender inmate, described McLaughlin as a painfully shy person who came out of her shell after deciding to transition.
“She always had a smile and a dad joke,” Hicklin said. “If you ever talked to her, it was always with the dad jokes.”
