US: The first transgender execution in the United States took place late Tuesday when a transgender woman found guilty of murder was executed.
According to a statement from the state prison division, Amber McLaughlin, 49, was pronounced dead at the Diagnostic and Correctional Center in the Missouri town of Bonne Terre soon before 7 p.m. local time.
According to the local news channel Fox2now, McLaughlin was put to death by lethal injection.
McLaughlin was not only the first person to die by the death penalty in America this year, but also the first transgender person of any sex to be executed in the nation.
Before she transitioned, she was found guilty of killing a previous girlfriend in a St. Louis suburb in 2003.
As a result of McLaughlin’s stalking of the victim, the ex-partner requested a restraining order.
McLaughlin waited for the victim, Beverly Guenther, as she left work on the day of the murder.
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Guenther was murdered by a kitchen knife after being sexually assaulted. Near the Mississippi River, her dead body was thrown.
A jury in 2006 convicted McLaughlin guilty of murder but couldn’t agree on how to punish her.
The trial judge intervened and handed down the death sentence. Both Indiana and Missouri permit such involvement.
Her attorneys petitioned Governor Mike Parson to commute McLaughlin’s sentence to life in prison, citing the fact that a jury did not find her guilty of capital murder.
Her attorneys stated in their mercy appeal that “The death sentence now being considered does not come from the conscience of the community — but from a single judge.”
Additionally, they contended that McLaughlin experienced mental health problems and had a rough childhood.
High-profile individuals, including two Missouri representatives in the US House of Representatives, Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver, had backed her cause.
They claimed in a letter to the governor that McLaughlin’s adoptive father had beaten and even tasered her with a baton in the past.
“Alongside this horrendous abuse, she was also silently struggling with her identity, grappling with what we now understand is gender dysphoria,” according to the letter.
People with this illness believe their gender identity and sex at birth do not match.
According to press accounts, McLaughlin started transitioning recently but had continued to be housed in the Missouri death row for men.
There has never been a known instance of an openly transgender person being executed in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which campaigns to end the practise in the country.
According to the group, the topic has gained increased attention in recent months as a result of the Ohio Supreme Court maintaining a transgender woman’s death sentence while Oregon State commuted one.
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