Transgender woman’s scheduled execution would be US first

Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing a former girlfriend in 2003. There is no known case of a transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center. She won the lawsuit in 2018 and became a mentor to other transgender inmates, including McLaughlin. Kevin Johnson, 37, was put to death Nov. 29 for the ambush killing of a Kirkwood, Missouri, police officer. Another Missouri inmate, Leonard Taylor, is scheduled to die Feb. 7 for killing his girlfriend and her three young children.