By James Pollard | Associated Press/Report for America
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began 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 lured the woman — who is referred to as Dime Doe in court documents — into driving to a sparsely populated rural county in South Carolina. Ritter then shot her three times in the head with a .22 caliber handgun after they reached an isolated area near his uncle’s home, according to Ben Garner, an assistant U.S. attorney for the district of South Carolina.
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.
And 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 received a 49-year prison sentence as part of a plea deal after he admitted to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.
But Tuesday marks the first time that such a case has ever been brought to trial, according to Brook Andrews, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina. Never before has a federal jury decided whether to convict and further punish someone for a crime based on the victim’s gender identity.
During opening arguments, Garner portrayed Ritter as someone working vigilantly to avoid the ridicule he’d face if his secret relationship was exposed. They’d met during his teenage years when he traveled from his grandmother’s Brooklyn…
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