Missouri is scheduled to execute Amber McLaughlin, a transgender woman convicted of a 2003 murder, who unsuccessfully sought clemency from the governor in part because the jury at her trial did not vote for a death sentence.
McClaughlin would become the first openly transgender person to be executed in the United States. That is unless Missouri’s governor Mike Parsons grants clemency and stops the planned lethal injection.
It would also mark the first execution in the new year.
Executions of women in the United States are already rare, with just 17 put to death since 1976 when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a brief suspension.
Two Missouri members of Congress, Democrats Cori Bush, and Emanuel Cleaver, have 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.
But the execution will move forward as planned, Parson’s office said in a statement Tuesday. The family and loved ones of her victim, Beverly Guenther, “deserve peace,” the statement said.
McLaughlin was sentenced to death for Guenther’s November 2003 murder, according to court records. The two were previously in a relationship, but they had separated by the time of the killing and Guenther had received an order of protection against McLaughlin after she was arrested for burglarizing Guenther’s home.
Several weeks later, while the order was in effect, McLaughlin waited for Guenther outside the victim’s workplace, court records say. McLaughlin repeatedly stabbed and raped Guenther, prosecutors argued at trial, pointing in part to blood spatters in the parking lot and in Guenther’s truck.
A jury convicted McLaughlin of first-degree murder, forcible rape, and armed criminal action, but the jury was deadlocked on the sentencing.
Most states that still have the death penalty require a jury to unanimously vote to recommend or impose the death penalty, but Missouri does not. According to Missouri state law, in cases where a jury is unable to agree on the death penalty, the judge decides between life imprisonment without parole or death. McLaughlin’s trial judge imposed the death penalty.
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