COLUMBIA, S.C. — The first federal trial on a hate crime based on gender identity begins Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man is accused of killing a black transgender woman and then fleeing to New York.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Lameek Ritter persuaded the woman — anonymously referred to as “Dime Doe” in court documents — to drive to a sparsely populated rural county in South Carolina. According to Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where Ritter was arrested last January, Ritter shot her three times in the head after they reached a remote area near a relative’s home.
In recent years, attacks on the LGBTQ+ community have increased. Transgender women of color have faced disproportionate rates of violence and hate crimes for decades, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In 2022, the number of gender identity-based hate crimes reported by the FBI increased 37% compared to the previous year.
Until 2009, federal hate crime laws did not include crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The first conviction involving a victim based on their gender identity occurred in 2017. A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to the murder of a 17-year-old transgender woman was sentenced to 49 years in prison.
But Tuesday marks the first time such a case has ever gone to trial, according to Brook Andrews, the assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina. Never before has a federal jury decided whether someone should be punished for a crime based on the victim’s gender identity.
The government has said Ritter’s friends and girlfriend learned of a sexual relationship between Ritter and the woman in the month before the killing. The two had been close friends, according to the defense, and were related through Ritter’s aunt and the woman’s uncle.
Prosecutors believe the revelation, which prompted Ritter’s girlfriend to utter a homophobic slur, left Ritter “extremely upset.”
“His crime was motivated by his anger at being mocked for having a sexual relationship with a transgender woman,” government lawyers wrote in a filing last January.
They say Ritter lied to state police about his whereabouts that day and fled South Carolina. Prosecutors have said he enlisted others to help burn his clothes, hide the gun and mislead police about his location on the day of the killing.
Government attorneys plan to present witness statements about Ritter’s location and text messages with the woman in which he allegedly persuaded her to join the ride. Evidence also includes video taken during a traffic stop that shows him in the woman’s car hours before her death.
Other evidence includes DNA from the woman’s car and testimony from multiple people who say Ritter personally confessed to them about the fatal shooting.
Ritter’s attorneys have said it is no surprise that Ritter may have been linked to the woman’s car, given their intimate ties. The defense has argued that there is no physical evidence pointing to Ritter as the perpetrator. Furthermore, the defense has said witnesses’ claims that Ritter tried to dispose of evidence are inconsistent.
Prosecutors do not plan to seek the death penalty, but Ritter could face multiple life sentences if convicted by a jury. In addition to the hate crime charge, Ritter faces two other charges of murder with a firearm and misleading investigators.
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Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
