“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.
“The State of Missouri will carry out McLaughlin’s sentence according to the Court’s order,” Parson said, “and deliver justice.”
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 had been convicted of murder and rape
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, 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.
If Parson were to grant clemency, McLaughlin’s attorneys argued, he would not have subverted the will of the jury, since the jury could not agree on a capital sentence.
That, however, was just one of several grounds on which McLaughlin’s attorneys said Parson should grant her clemency, according to the petition submitted to the governor.
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.
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.
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 condemned inmate to be put to death in Missouri this year, and the 94th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1989. Only Texas (578), Oklahoma (119), Virginia (113), and Florida (99) have carried out more executions since the death penalty was resumed in the US on January 17, 1977.
— McLaughlin becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,589th overall since the US Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in its Gregg v Georgia decision of July 2, 1976.
Source: CNN, Dakin Andone and Amir Vera, January 4, 2023
Transgender Missouri inmate executed for fatal stabbing
Amber McLaughlin, 49, was convicted of stalking and killing a former girlfriend, then dumping the body near the Mississippi River in St. Louis. McLaughlin’s fate was sealed earlier Tuesday when Republican Gov. Mike Parson declined a clemency request.
McLaughlin spoke quietly with a spiritual adviser at her side as the fatal dose of pentobarbital was injected. McLaughlin breathed heavily a couple of times, then shut her eyes. She was pronounced dead a few minutes later.
“I am sorry for what I did,” McLaughlin said in a final, written, statement. “I am a loving and caring person.”
McLaughlin's clemency petition included reports citing a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, a condition that causes anguish and other symptoms as a result of a disparity between a person’s gender identity and their assigned sex at birth. But McLaughlin’s sexual identity was “not the main focus” of the clemency request.
McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago, according to Jessica Hicklin, who spent 26 years in prison for a drug-related killing before being released a year ago. Hicklin, now 43, 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. McLaughlin did not receive hormone treatments, however, Komp said.
Hicklin described McLaughlin as a painfully shy person who came out of her shell after she decided to transition.
“She always had a smile and a dad joke,” Hicklin said. “If you ever talked to her, it was always with the dad jokes.”
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has estimated there are 3,200 transgender inmates in the nation’s prisons and jails. Perhaps the best-known case of a transgender prisoner seeking treatment was that of Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who served seven years in federal prison for leaking government documents to Wikileaks until President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in 2017. The Army agreed to pay for hormone treatments for Manning in 2015.
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in a court filing that state prison officials must treat an inmate’s gender identity condition just as they would treat other medical or mental health conditions, regardless of when the diagnosis occurred.
Source: The Associated Press, Jim Salter, January 3, 2023
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde