Article originally appeared on www.westernjournal.com.
Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin will become the first openly transgender prisoner executed in the U.S. He is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for murdering a former girlfriend in 2003.
McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending.
The clemency request focuses on several issues, including McLaughlin’s traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard in his trial. A foster parent rubbed feces in his face when he was a toddler, and his adoptive father used a stun gun on him, according to the clemency petition. It says he suffers from depression and attempted suicide multiple times.
There is no known case of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center.
McLaughlin was in a relationship with girlfriend Beverly Guenther. McLaughlin would show up at the suburban St. Louis office where the …
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