Current:Home > FinanceFirst federal gender-based hate crime trial starts over trans woman's killing -VisionFunds
First federal gender-based hate crime trial starts over trans woman's killing
View
Date:2025-04-19 02:39:43
The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity is set to begin Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman and then fled to New York.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Lameek Ritter coaxed the woman — who is anonymously referred to as "Dime Doe" in court documents — into driving to a sparsely populated rural county in South Carolina. Ritter shot her three times in the head after they reached an isolated area near a relative's home, according to Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where Ritter was arrested last January.
In recent years there has been a surge in attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. For decades, transgender women of color have faced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In 2022, the number of gender identity-based hate crimes reported by the FBI increased by 37% compared to the previous year.
Until 2009, federal hate crime laws did not account for offenses motivated by the victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. The first conviction involving a victim targeted for their gender identity came in 2017. A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman received a 49-year prison sentence.
But Tuesday marks the first time that such a case has ever been brought 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 to punish someone for a crime based on the victim's gender identity.
The government has said that Ritter's friends and girlfriend learned about a sexual relationship between Ritter and the woman in the month prior to 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 hurl a homophobic slur, made 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 that Ritter lied that day about his whereabouts to state police and fled South Carolina. Prosecutors have said he enlisted others to help burn his clothes, hide the weapon and mislead police about his location on the day of the murder.
Government lawyers plan to present witness testimony about Ritter's location and text messages with the woman, in which he allegedly persuaded her to take the ride. Evidence also includes video footage taken at a traffic stop that captures 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 that Ritter privately confessed to them about the fatal shooting.
Ritter's lawyers have said it is no surprise that Ritter might have been linked to the woman's car, considering their intimate ties. The defense has argued that no physical evidence points to Ritter as the perpetrator. Further, the defense has said the witnesses' claims that Ritter tried to dispose of evidence are inconsistent.
Prosecutors don't plan to seek the death penalty, but Ritter could receive multiple life sentences if convicted by a jury. In addition to the hate crimes charge, Ritter faces two other counts that he committed murder with a firearm and misled investigators.
- In:
- South Carolina
- Politics
- Hate Crime
- Crime
veryGood! (1738)
Related
- 'No Good Deed': Who's the killer in the Netflix comedy? And will there be a Season 2?
- Poccoin: A Retrospective of Historical Bull Markets in the Cryptocurrency Space
- More wild Atlantic salmon found in U.S. rivers than any time in the past decade, officials say
- The Biden Administration is ending drilling leases in ANWR, at least for now
- Juan Soto to be introduced by Mets at Citi Field after striking record $765 million, 15
- 'Alarming' allegations: 3 Albuquerque firefighters arrested in woman's alleged gang rape
- How much do NFL players care about their Madden rating? A lot, actually.
- America’s state supreme courts are looking less and less like America
- Trump invites nearly all federal workers to quit now, get paid through September
- A national program in Niger encouraged jihadis to defect. The coup put its future in jeopardy
Ranking
- Travis Hunter, the 2
- Alaska cat named Leo reunited with owners almost month after their home collapsed into flood-swollen river
- Horoscopes Today, September 6, 2023
- Inside Rolling Stones 'Hackney Diamonds' London album party with Fallon, Sydney Sweeney
- Former Syrian official arrested in California who oversaw prison charged with torture
- Order not to use tap water in West Virginia community enters fourth week after plant malfunction
- 11,000 runners disqualified from Mexico City Marathon for cheating
- When Big Oil Gets In The Carbon Removal Game, Who Wins?
Recommendation
Travis Hunter, the 2
Summer of Record Heat Deals Costly Damage to Texas Water Systems
A female inmate dies after jumping out of a moving vehicle during a jail transport in Kentucky
Poccoin: Cryptocurrency Through Its Darkest Moments
Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets?
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick celebrate 35 years of marriage: 'Feels like a heartbeat'
United Airlines lifts nationwide ground stop after technology issue
Scarred by two years of high inflation, this is how many Americans are surviving