Amber McLaughlin, 49, will be the first openly transgender woman executed in the United States unless a governor grants her clemency. She is scheduled to die by injection in the Midwestern state of Missouri on Tuesday for the 2003 murder of a former girlfriend.
Larry Komp, McLaughlin’s attorney, stated that no court appeals are pending.
To be granted, the clemency request must be approved by Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson. It focuses on a number of issues, including McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which were never addressed by the jury during her trial.
“We think Amber has demonstrated incredible courage because I can tell you, there’s a lot of hate when it comes to that issue,” Komp, her lawyer, said on Monday. But, he added, McLaughlin’s sexual identity is “not the main focus” of the clemency request.
According to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center, there has never been an execution of an openly transgender inmate in the United States. McLaughlin’s personality blossomed during her gender transition, according to a prison friend.
McLaughlin was in a relationship with girlfriend Beverly Guenther before transitioning. According to court records, McLaughlin would show up at the suburban office in St. Louis, Missouri, where Guenther, 45, worked, sometimes hiding inside the building. Guenther obtained a restraining order, and she was occasionally escorted to her car after work by police officers.
Guenther’s neighbors called the police the night of November 20, 2003, when she failed to return home. Officers went to the office building, where they found a broken knife handle near her car and a trail of blood. A day later, McLaughlin led police to a location near the Mississippi River in St Louis, where the body had been dumped.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006. A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury deadlocked on the sentence. A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021.
Jessica Hicklin, 43, who spent 26 years in prison for a drug-related killing in western Missouri in 1995, knew Amber before she transitioned. She was sixteen years old. She was granted release in January 2022 due to her age at the time of the crime.
Hicklin, 43, began transitioning while incarcerated and sued the Missouri Department of Corrections in 2016 to challenge a policy that prohibited hormone therapy for inmates who had not received it prior to incarceration. In 2018, she won the lawsuit and became a mentor to other transgender inmates, including McLaughlin.
Though they were 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’s always paperwork and bureaucracy, so I spent time helping her learn to file the right things and talk to the right people,” Hicklin said.
In the process, a friendship developed.
“We would sit down once a week and have what I referred to as girl talk,” Hicklin said. “She always had a smile and a dad joke. If you ever talked to her, it was always with the dad jokes.”
They also discussed the challenges a transgender inmate faces in a male prison — things like how to obtain feminine items, deal with rude comments, and stay safe.
McLaughlin still had insecurities, especially about her well-being, Hicklin said.
“Definitely a vulnerable person,” Hicklin said. “Definitely afraid of being assaulted or victimized, which is more common for trans folks in [the] Department of Corrections.”
The only woman ever executed in Missouri was Bonnie B Heady, who was put to death on December 18, 1953, for kidnapping and killing a six-year-old boy. Heady was executed in the gas chamber, side by side with the other kidnapper and killer, Carl Austin Hall.
Nationally, 18 people were executed in 2022, including two in Missouri. Kevin Johnson, 37, was put to death on November 29 for the ambush killing of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Carmen Deck was executed in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a robbery at their home in De Soto, Missouri.
Another Missouri inmate, Leonard Taylor, is scheduled to die on February 7 for killing his girlfriend and her three young children.
