ST. LOUIS (AP) – Nearly 1,600 death row inmates have been put to death in the U.S. since 1977, but an execution scheduled for Tuesday in Missouri would be the first involving a transgender woman. Amber McLaughlin is set to die for fatally stabbing a suburban St. Louis woman nearly 20 years ago. With no court appeals planned, McLaughlin’s fate rests with Republican Gov. Mike Parson, who is weighing a clemency request. A database for the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center shows 1,558 people have been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in the mid-1970s. All but 17 of them were men. The center says there were no known previous cases of an openly transgender inmate being executed.
