Missouri inmate would be first openly transgender person executed in nation

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : The lawsuit argued that the state's refusal to provide medically necessary care -- including hormone therapy, permanent hair removal and access to gender-affirming care products -- was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.
46% : "I believe in the death penalty," Goldman added.
42% : McLaughlin lives in the men's prison because assignments are based on "genitalia rather than on gender identity," Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said.
42% :"Missouri law permits a trial judge to make independent factual findings (both as to aggravating and mitigating factors) and to impose a sentence of death when a jury deadlocks on whether the death penalty is warranted," their letter said.
41% : "Things are going to pick up in 2023 beyond the two dates we have now," predicted Elyse Max, co-director of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
40% : McLaughlin would be the first openly transgender inmate put to death in the U.S., said Robert Dunham, executive director for the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based nonprofit that tracks the death penalty.
40% : Missouri and Indiana are the only states that permit a judge to hand down the death penalty when jurors can't agree.
40% : Perry ruled, in part, that a flawed jury form meant a judge could not have known whether the jury thought the aggravating factors in favor of the death penalty -- such as depravity -- outweighed mitigating circumstances and that a jury, not a judge, had to weigh those factors.
38% : Former St. Louis County prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch, who spent 28 years in office, prosecuted murder cases that have sent 10 men to the execution chamber, with McLaughlin and four others awaiting execution.
38% : McCulloch lost reelection four years ago to Wesley Bell, who opposes the death penalty.
33% : Executions picking up in MissouriMissouri has executed 93 people -- all men -- since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

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