USA Nazi gas and electric chairs: the "new" capital punishment
Amber McLaughlin
, a trans woman, has been executed this Tuesday in the United States for a murder in 2003, and became the first person openly from this group to face the death penalty in the country.
McLaughlin, who began her gender transition some three years ago in prison, was given a lethal injection
in Missouri on Tuesday night
after Missouri Governor Mike Parson, a Republican, rejected his plea for clemency.
McLaughlin, 49, was convicted of the
rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, Beverly Guenther
, in St. Louis, and her execution was also the first of the year in the United States.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes the death penalty, there is no other documented case of a trans man or woman executed in the United States.
"McLaughlin stalked, raped and murdered Guenther," Parson added.
"She is a violent criminal. Guenther's family and loved ones deserve peace," she stressed.
McLaughlin's lawyers made a clemency petition to Parson on December 12, pleading with her to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, emphasizing that the jury that found her guilty failed to reach a decision on her sentence.
Missouri and Indiana are the only
two states
where the law allows the presiding judge to impose the death penalty in the case of a hung jury.
But Governor Parson said this morning that McLaughlin's conviction and sentence stood.
Michelle Smith, co-director of 'Missurians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty', has told 'The Kansas City Star' that this variant makes Missouri "an extreme case" that "reeks of injustice."
In their clemency petition, McLaughlin's lawyers claimed that she was abused as a child, and suffered from an intellectual disability that was never mentioned during the trial.
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