Barring a last-minute intervention, Amber McLaughlin is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Missouri today. Rather than focusing on the (literally) bloody murder of his former girlfriend in 2003, most of the media coverage of this story you will see today highlights the inmate’s claims to be transgender. This would make him the “first openly transgender woman” to be executed in the country. There are no court appeals pending, so the only way that the execution won’t go forward is if Governor Mike Parson responds positively to a clemency request from McLaughlin’s attorneys. (CBS News)

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. A foster parent rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father used a stun gun on her, according to the clemency petition. It says she suffers from depression and attempted suicide multiple times.

A spokesman for the Governor said that the clemency request was still being reviewed last night. But Parson has a record of supporting the death penalty for murderers. Only a little more than a year ago he declined to offer clemency to a convict who killed three convenience store workers during a robbery despite the fact that the Pope had personally appealed to Parson to show mercy.

As for McLaughlin’s crime, it wasn’t some sort of accidental death scenario. Long before his “transition” in prison, he was in a relationship with a woman who he stalked to the point where she had to have a court take out a no-contact order on him. The police repeatedly had to escort her when she left work to ensure her safety. But McLaughlin still managed to get into her workplace, stab her to death, and drag her body to a spot near a river where he dumped her.

McLaughlin’s attorney is basing the clemency request on a claim that his client is mentally ill, suffered abuse as a child, suffers from depression, and is generally unstable. He claims that his client’s transgender status is “not the main focus” of the clemency request, but they’re obviously playing up that angle.

That brings us to the question of precisely “how transgender” McLaughlin actually is. He lived as a man until after he went to prison and, as noted above, had relationships with women. Even after announcing his “transition,” (only three years ago as his date with the executioner grew closer) he’s never had any sort of transitional surgery. He hasn’t even had hormone therapy yet, so it really seems like he’s basically just a guy wearing women’s clothes.

If my suspicions are accurate, Amber McLaughlin won’t have been the first man to suddenly “realize” they were transgender when faced with prison time. But barring some sort of last-minute change of heart by the Governor today, this story will probably be over by sometime this afternoon or evening.