A death row prisoner could become the first openly transgender woman executed in the United States on Tuesday.

Missouri is scheduled to execute Amber McLaughlin, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006.

McLaughlin was found guilty of the killing of her ex-girlfriend Beverly Guenther. After the two broke up, McLaughlin allegedly became obsessed with Guenther – forcing her to take out a restraining order and get a police escort to work.

Eventually, Guenther’s neighbors reported her missing after she failed to come home from work one evening in 2003. Investigators found a broken knife handle and a trail of blood, which eventually lead to where her body was dumped by the Mississippi River.

She was sentenced to death by a judge after a jury failed to come to a unanimous decision for her sentencing.

In 2016, an appellate court overturned McLaughlin’s death sentence after it found her defense failed to present information about her mental health at her original trial. However, a federal appeals court reversed the decision again in 2021.

McLaughlin has no further court appeals to make after the Supreme Court declined to review her case. Her fate lies in a clemency request filed to Missouri Governor Mike Parsons.

Her attorney, Larry Komp, said that her gender identity was not the ‘main focus’ of her clemency request. However, he did note that ‘Amber has demonstrated incredible courage because I can tell you there’s a lot of hate when it comes to that issue.’

Instead, the clemency petition focuses on the failures of her original defense attorneys and the effects of her childhood trauma.

According to her attorneys, McLaughlin suffered a traumatic childhood in foster care. One foster parent punished her by rubbing feces on her face, and her eventual adoptive father beat her with paddles, night sticks, and shot her with a stun gun.

Additionally, McLaughlin has been diagnosed with depression and gender dysphoria, and has had multiple suicide attempts.

It also states that McLaughlin took responsibility for Geunther’s murder. ‘McLaughlin consistently and genuinely expressed remorse for the death of Ms Beverly Guenther,’ the petition reads. ‘She remains tormented by memories of her death.’

McLaughlin has received letters of support from the Missouri Democratic LGBTQ+, as well as Missouri Representatives Emanuel Cleaver and Cori Bush.

‘Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,’ Bush wrote in a letter to Governor Parsons.

She also received support from seven former Missouri judges, who signed a letter asking the governor to commute her sentence to life in prison without parole. The group was lead by former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael A Wolff.

If the execution takes place, McLaughlin will become only the second woman ever executed in Missouri. The first woman executed was Bonnie Heady in 1953, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease alongside her co-conspirator Carl Austin Hall.

Missouri executed two inmates on death row in 2022. Among those was Kevin Johnson, who was executed in November for a murder he committed as a teenager.

Controversially, the Missouri Supreme Court barred Johnson’s 19-year-old daughter from standing by his side at his death, due to a Missouri law banning any individual under the age of 20 from viewing an execution.

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