Attorneys for a transgender woman scheduled to be executed next month in Missouri are asking for clemency, in part because of her history of abuse and intellectual disability.
Amber McLaughlin, convicted of murdering her ex-girlfriend Beverly Guenther in St. Louis County in 2003, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Jan. 3. On Tuesday, she submitted an application to Gov. Mike Parson asking for a commutation of her sentence.
In the application, McLaughlin’s attorneys point to reversals and unusual actions in her case.
In her 2006 trial, a judge handed down the death penalty on McLaughlin when the jury could not reach a decision on her sentence, something allowed in only two states — Missouri and Indiana. Her death sentence was later vacated by a federal judge on the basis of ineffective defense, but that ruling was reversed on appeal and the sentence reimposed.
The death warrant now in effect was issued by the Missouri Supreme Court on September 29.
Attorneys for McLaughlin, 49, argue her sentence should be commuted because she suffered abuse as a child, has a borderline intellectual disability and is remorseful.
According to the clemency application, McLaughlin was harmed before she was even born.
“Alcohol ingested by her mother irretrievably impacted her cognitive development,” her attorneys wrote.
As a child she suffered abuse at the hands of her birth parents, foster families and adoptive parents. Her adoptive home was described as a “house of horrors” where her father used a Taser on her, and cabinets and the refrigerator were kept locked.
“Amber McLaughlin never had a chance,” the clemency application said. “She was failed by the institutions, individuals and interventions that should have protected her.”
On intelligence tests, McLaughlin tested at borderline or very low range levels, her attorneys said.
When she was 12, a developmental pediatrician asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“Dead,” she replied, according to the clemency application.
She has tried to kill herself several times, before and after being incarcerated.
McLaughlin has expressed “genuine remorse for her horrible conduct, as noted by the lead law enforcement officer in the case,” the clemency petition continued, “and remains tormented by memories of (Guenther’s) her death.”
Her conviction was overturned by a federal judge who found McLaughlin’s trial attorney “constitutionally ineffective.” That was reversed by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Parson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
During an interview last month, Michelle Smith, co-director of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said it is unlikely the state legislature will abolish the death penalty. But, she said, the organization wants to push a bill that would prohibit a judge from imposing a death sentence when a jury is split.
“A judge should on their own, not be giving people death penalties,” Smith said.
The state executed two people this year: Carman Deck on May 3 and Kevin Johnson on Nov. 29. Johnson’s case garnered statewide and national attention after a special prosecutor argued Johnson’s trial had been marred in racism. In a last minute decision, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to go forward, but Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent.
Missouri was one of five states that carried out the death penalty this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
