Sad first.

Unless the Governor of Missouri grants her clemency, Amber McLaughlin will become the first transgender person in history executed on Tuesday.

The 49-year-old woman is to receive a lethal injection for a murder committed before her transition.

She will also be the first person executed in 2023 in the United States.

In 2003, the American had killed her ex-companion in the suburbs of Saint-Louis, the big city of Missouri.

Amber McLaughlin had not supported their separation and had been harassing her since, to the point that her former girlfriend had obtained protective measures.

But on the day of the crime, Amber McLaughlin was waiting for her outside work with a kitchen knife and stabbed and then raped her before dumping her body near the Mississippi River, according to local media.

Amber McLaughlin found guilty of femicide before her transition

At the end of her trial in 2006, the jurors found her guilty of the murder, but they failed to agree on the sentence to be imposed on her.

A judge then decided by retaining the death penalty.

The states of Missouri and Indiana are the only ones to authorize their magistrates to pronounce death sentences in the absence of unanimity in the popular jury.


Based on this singularity, Amber McLaughlin's lawyers asked Republican Governor Mike Parson to commute her sentence to life in prison.

The task promises to be difficult: since his election, Mike Parson has not accepted any of the requests for clemency submitted to him.

"The death penalty considered here does not reflect the conscience of the community but that of a single judge," they wrote in their request for clemency, which also invokes the difficult childhood and psychiatric disorders of their client.

Their request received the support of several personalities.

According to local press, she began her transition in recent years but remains held on Missouri's male death row.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), which refers, no openly transgender person has yet been executed in the United States.

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