Amber McLaughlin is scheduled to be executed Tuesday, becoming the first transgender woman to suffer the death penalty in the United States, if not prevented by Missouri Governor Mike Parsons, a Republican.
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 on the grounds that she suffers 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 stresses.
McLaughlin has been «solidly diagnosed with borderline intellectual disability» and has been «universally diagnosed with brain damage as well as fetal alcohol syndrome.»
The Death Penalty Information Center — an opponent of capital punishment — has highlighted that McLaughlin «is the first trans person to be assigned an execution date in the United States.»
In addition, he recalled that the jury did not approve the death penalty unanimously, a circumstance that is required in the vast majority of states that execute inmates. «Missouri law considers a non-unanimous jury to be 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 aggravating circumstances rejected by the jury to sentence McLaughlin to death.»
Numerous political and civil society personalities have called for the annulment of McLaughlin’s execution, recalling that she was abandoned by her mother, recurrently assaulted by her adoptive father and the protagonist of «multiple suicide attempts».
McLaughlin has not initiated any legal process to change her name or begin a physical transit, so she remains in the Potosi Correctional Center, near St. Louis, an all-male facility.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
