USA - Missouri. Amber McLaughlin executed on January 3

USA - Amber McLaughlin (MO)

04 January 2023 :

Amber McLaughlin was executed on January 3.
Missouri carried out the first known US execution of an openly transgender person Tuesday when Amber McLaughlin was put to death by lethal injection.
“McLaughlin was pronounced dead at 6:51 p.m.,” the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a written statement.
“I am sorry for what I did,” wrote McLaughlin in her final statement, which was released by the department of corrections. “I am a loving & caring person.”
McLaughlin’s execution – the first in the US this year – is unusual: Executions of women in the United States are already rare. Prior to McLaughlin’s execution, just 17 had been put to death since 1976, when the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a brief suspension, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The non-profit organization confirmed McLaughlin is the first openly transgender person to be executed in the United States.
McLaughlin, 49, and her attorneys had petitioned Republican Gov. Mike Parson for clemency, asking him to commute her death sentence. Aside from the fact a jury could not agree on the death penalty, they say, McLaughlin has shown genuine remorse and has struggled with an intellectual disability, mental health issues and a history of childhood trauma.
But in a statement Tuesday, Parson’s office announced the execution would move forward as planned. The family and loved ones of her victim, Beverly Guenther, “deserve peace,” the statement said.
McLaughlin – listed in court documents as Scott McLaughlin – had not initiated a legal name change or transition and as a death-sentenced person, was kept at Potosi Correctional Center near St. Louis, which housed male inmates, McLaughlin’s federal public defender Larry Komp and the governor’s office have said.
McLaughlin was sentenced to death for Guenther’s November 2003 murder.
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, court records show. But when it came to a sentence, the jury was deadlocked.
Most US states with the death penalty require a jury to unanimously vote to recommend or impose the death penalty, but Missouri does not. According to 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.
In addition to the issue of her deadlocked jury, McLaughlin’s attorneys pointed to her struggles with mental health, as well as a history of childhood trauma. McLaughlin has been “consistently diagnosed with borderline intellectual disability,” and “universally diagnosed with brain damage as well as fetal alcohol syndrome,” the petition said.
McLaughlin was “abandoned” by her mother and placed into the foster care system, and in one placement, had “feces thrust into her face,” according to the petition.
She later suffered more abuse and trauma, including being tased by her adoptive father, the petition said, and battled depression that led to “multiple suicide attempts.”
At trial, McLaughlin’s jury did not hear expert testimony about her mental state at the time of Guenther’s murder, the petition said. That testimony, her attorneys said, could have tipped the scales toward a life sentence by supporting the mitigating factors cited by the defense and rebutting the prosecution’s claim McLaughlin acted with depravity of mind – that her actions were particularly brutal or “wantonly vile” – the only aggravating factor the jury found.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury deadlocked on the sentence. A federal judge in 2016 vacated McLaughlin’s death sentence due to ineffective counsel, court records show, citing her trial attorneys’ failure to present that expert testimony. That ruling, however, was later overturned by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
One person who knew McLaughlin before she transitioned is Jessica Hicklin, 43, who spent 26 years in prison for a drug-related killing in western Missouri in 1995. She was 16. Because of her age when the crime occurred, she was granted release in January 2022.
Hicklin began transitioning while in prison and in 2016 sued the Missouri Department of Corrections, challenging a policy that prohibited hormone therapy for inmates who weren't receiving it before being incarcerated. She won the lawsuit in 2018 and became a mentor to other transgender inmates, including McLaughlin.
Though imprisoned together for around a decade, Hicklin said McLaughlin was so shy they rarely interacted. But as McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago, she turned to Hicklin for guidance on issues such as mental health counseling and getting help to ensure her safety inside a male-dominated maximum-security prison.
There are approximately 4,890 transgender prisoners living in state prisons across the US, but an NBC News investigation was able to confirm only 15 cases in which these prisoners were housed according to their lived gender.
McLaughlin’s execution “would highlight all the flaws of the justice system and would be a great injustice on a number of levels,” Komp, her attorney, told CNN previously.
“It would continue the systemic failures that existed throughout Amber’s life where no interventions occurred to stop and intercede to protect her as a child and teen,” Komp said. “All that could go wrong did go wrong for her.”
McLaughlin becomes the 1st inmate to be put to death this year in Missouri and the 94th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1989.
McLaughlin becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,559st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977