Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing 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 her trial. According to the clemency petition, a foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her. It says she suffers from depression and has attempted suicide multiple times.