This Tuesday Amber McLaughlin is scheduled to be executed and thus become the first transsexual woman to suffer the death penalty in the United States, if the governor of the state of Missouri, the Republican Mike Parsons, does not prevent it.
McLaughlin has still been convicted as Scott McLaughlin for the 2003 rape and murder of a woman, Beverly Guenther, but has formally petitioned Governor Parsons for clemency alleging he suffers from brain damage and childhood trauma. If Parsons does not intervene, McLaughlin will be executed by lethal injection, reports CNN.
“The investigation has recognized McLaughlin’s sincere remorse and so has each and every expert who has evaluated her in the years since the trial,” the petition to the governor said.
McLaughlin has been “solidly diagnosed with borderline intellectual disability” and has been “universally diagnosed with brain damage as well as fetal alcohol syndrome.”
The Information Center on the Death Penalty –opposite of capital punishment– has highlighted that McLaughlin “is the first trans person to whom an execution date has been assigned in the United States.”
Also, remember that the jury did not unanimously approve the death penalty, a circumstance that is necessary in the vast majority of states that execute prisoners. “Missouri law considers that a non-unanimous jury is a deadlocked jury, so a rule was used that allows the judge to impose a sentence on his own,” they point out, while recalling that “the judge relied on circumstances aggravations rejected by the jury to sentence McLaughlin to death”.
Numerous political figures and civil society have called for McLaughlin’s execution to be annulled, recalling that she was abandoned by her mother, repeatedly assaulted by her adoptive father and the protagonist of “multiple suicide attempts.”
McLaughlin has not started any legal process to change her name or begin a physical transit, so she remains at the Potosi Correctional Center, near San Luis, an all-male facility.
