Facts

• Amber McLaughlin, 49, is set to become the first openly transgender woman executed in the US on Tuesday after Missouri Gov. Mike Parson rejected a request to grant clemency.^[1]
• Before transitioning, McLaughlin had been in a relationship with Beverly Guenther, who later filed for a restraining order. Guenther was found raped and murdered after neighbors reported she hadn't come home on Nov. 20, 2003.^[1]
• Officers went to Guenther's office, where they found evidence of foul play, after which McLaughlin led them to her body near the Mississippi River in St. Louis. McLaughlin was convicted in 2006, and after the jury was deadlocked on the sentencing, a judge ordered the death penalty.^[2]
• A court ordered a new sentencing hearing in 2016, but a federal appeals court in 2021 upheld the death penalty. McLaughlin's attorney filed a petition for clemency that cites physical abuse as a foster child and multiple suicide attempts last month.^[3]
• McLaughlin began transitioning about three years ago and was mentored by fellow transgender inmate Jessica Hicklin who won a lawsuit in 2018 that required the Missouri Dept. of Corrections to provide hormone treatment for transgender inmates.^[4]
• McLaughlin will become the latest inmate to be executed after 18 executions last year, two of which were in Missouri. The only woman to ever be executed in the state was Bonnie Heady in 1953 for killing a six-year-old boy.^[5]