Nearly 1,600 death row inmates have been executed in the United States since 1977, but an execution scheduled for Tuesday in Missouri will mark the first of an openly transgender woman.
Missouri Governor Mike Parson said on Tuesday he would not veto the execution of 49-year-old Amber McLaughlin, who is set to be executed for stabbing her ex to death. -girlfriend almost 20 years ago. McLaughlin’s attorneys have not planned any legal appeals.
A database from the Death Penalty Information Center, an organization opposed to such executions, shows that 1,558 people have been executed in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in the mid-1970s. , there were only 17 women, and the center did not identify any known previous cases of an openly transgender inmate being executed.
A clemency petition submitted by his attorneys cited, among other things, McLaughlin’s severe childhood trauma and mental health issues — things the jury never heard of at trial. The petition also cited reports of a diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’, a condition causing anxiety and other symptoms resulting from a mismatch between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. .
But McLaughlin’s gender identity was “not the primary focus” of the clemency petition, his attorney, Larry Komp, said.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. He was sentenced to death by a judge when a jury deadlocked on sentencing. Komp said Missouri and Indiana are the only states that allow a judge, rather than a jury, to sentence a defendant to death.
In 2016, a court ordered a new sentencing hearing, but the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the death penalty in 2021.
“McLaughlin’s guilt in the murder of Ms. Guenther has never been questioned,” Governor Parson said in a statement released by his office. The family and friends of M.me Guenther deserve [de retrouver] the peace. »
The Bureau of Prison Statistics estimated that there are 3,200 transgender inmates in US prisons.
The US Department of Justice pointed out in a 2015 court filing that state prison officials should treat an inmate’s gender identity status as they would treat other medical or mental health issues, regardless of when the diagnosis was made.