Unless Missouri Governor Mike Parson grants clemency, 49-year-old Amber McLaughlin will be the first transgender woman in the United States to be executed. Tuesday, she will be executed by injection for killing an ex-girlfriend in 2003.
Larry Komp, McLaughlin’s attorney, stated that there are no current court appeals. As of Monday morning, nearly 4,900 of the required 6,400 signatures had been gathered for an online petition imploring Parson to halt the execution.
On December 12, attorneys presented an appeal for executive clemency to the governor, requesting that McLaughlin’s sentence be commuted to life and emphasizing that she was not sentenced to death by a jury. McLaughlin’s sentencing was decided by a county judge in St. Louis after the jury could not reach a verdict during her trial. According to the application, Missouri is one of only two states in the United States, along with Indiana, that permits trial judges to impose the death penalty in the event of a hung jury.
The clemency petition focuses on a number of concerns, including McLaughlin’s horrific background and mental health issues that were never presented to the jury at her trial. According to the clemency petition, a foster parent smeared excrement in her face when she was a kid, and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her. It is stated that she suffers from depression and has made many suicide attempts.
According to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center, no openly transgender inmate has been executed in the United States previously. During her gender transformation, McLaughlin’s personality grew, according to a jail companion.
Amber McLaughlin, who is on death row, is depicted in this photo given by the Federal Public Defender Office. File:Jeremy S. Weis/Federal Public Defender Office via Associated Press
McLaughlin was in a relationship with girlfriend Beverly Guenther prior to his transformation. According to court documents, McLaughlin would show up at the suburban St. Louis office where 45-year-old Guenther worked, sometimes lurking within the facility. Guenther secured a restraining order, and she was occasionally escorted to her car after work by police officers.
On the evening of November 20, 2003, when Guenther was murdered, her neighbors alerted the police when she failed to return home. Officers arrived at the office building and discovered a bloody trail and a broken knife handle beside her car. The next day, McLaughlin led authorities to the area where Guenther’s body had been discarded near the Mississippi River in St. Louis. Guenther was later revealed to have been raped and murdered in St. Louis County.
In 2006, McLaughlin was found guilty of first-degree murder. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death when the jury could not reach a verdict. A court granted a new sentencing hearing in 2016, but in 2021 a panel of the federal court of appeals upheld the death penalty.
Jessica Hicklin, 43, served 26 years in jail for a 1995 drug-related homicide in western Missouri. Hicklin knew McLaughlin before she transitioned. She was 16 years old. Due to her age at the time of the offense, she was given her freedom in January 2022.
Hicklin began transitioning while incarcerated and filed a lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Corrections in 2016 to challenge a policy prohibiting hormone therapy for convicts who were not getting it prior to incarceration. She won the lawsuit in 2018 and became a mentor to McLaughlin and other transgender prisoners.
Although they were incarcerated together for about a decade, Hicklin stated that McLaughlin was so timid that they barely interacted. Three years ago, when McLaughlin began transitioning, she sought to Hicklin for advice on subjects such as mental health treatment and obtaining assistance to secure her safety inside a maximum-security jail dominated by men.
Hicklin stated, “There is always paperwork and red tape, so I spent time teaching her how to file the correct documents and speak with the right people.”
Throughout the process, a relationship was formed.
Once a week, we sat down for what I referred to as ‘female talk,’ Hicklin recounted. “She had a constant smile and dad joke. If you ever spoke with her, she would constantly make dad jokes.”
In addition, they examined the difficulties a transgender inmate faces in a male prison, including how to obtain feminine objects, how to deal with nasty comments, and how to remain safe.
Hicklin stated that McLaughlin still had insecurities, particularly regarding her health.
Clearly a vulnerable individual, Hicklin stated. “I fear being assaulted or victimized, which is more common for trans people in the Department of Corrections,” the inmate said.
Bonnie B. Heady was the only woman ever executed in Missouri; she was executed on December 18, 1953, for kidnapping and murdering a 6-year-old boy. Heady was executed alongside the other abductor and murderer, Carl Austin Hall, in the gas chamber.
In 2022, 18 individuals were executed nationwide, including two in Missouri. 29 November, Kevin Johnson, age 37, was executed for the ambush murder of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Carmen Deck was executed in May for the robbery-related murders of James and Zelma Long in De Soto, Missouri.
Leonard Taylor is slated to be executed on February 7 for murdering his girlfriend and her three small children.
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