By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN
(CNN) — A South Carolina man was sentenced to life in prison for the 2019 murder of a Black transgender woman, following the first trial verdict to convict someone of a federal hate crime against a trans person.
In February, a jury convicted Daqua Lameek Ritter of one hate crime count, one federal firearms count, and one obstruction count, stemming from the murder of Dime Doe, in a landmark verdict prosecutors say is the first of its kind.
“This sentencing sends a clear message — the Justice Department vigorously defends the civil rights of every American,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement Thursday. “We will use all the resources at our disposal to safeguard the rights of the LGBTQI+ community, and we will investigate and prosecute perpetrators of transphobic-fueled violence in our country.”
Thursday’s sentencing comes at a time of ongoing violence and legislation targeting the transgender community across the United States. In 2024, at least 27 transgender and gender-expansive people’s lives have been taken through violent means, including gun and intimate partner violence, according to data from the Human Rights Campaign. Overall, 74% of those victims were people of color; 48% of the victims were Black transgender women.
During a four-day trial in February, federal prosecutors alleged Ritter was upset over “rumors about his sexual relationship” with Doe, the Justice Department said in a news release at the time.
On August 4, 2019, Ritter lured Doe to a remote area in Allendale – about 80 miles southwest of Columbia – and shot her in the head three times, the department said.
CNN has reached out to Ritter’s attorney.
The “sentencing is a culmination of hard work and dedication to the pursuit of justice for Dime Doe,” FBI Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Chad Yarbrough said in a Thursday statement.
This case is the first guilty verdict in trial under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was passed in 2009 after Shepard, a gay student in Wyoming, and Byrd, a Black father of three in Texas, were murdered in 1998. The act expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to include gender, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation.
Doe’s case is historic because it’s the first time a jury has found someone guilty for a hate crime motivated by gender identity under the act, Clarke said in a February statement.
Other people have been prosecuted by the act. In 2017, 29-year-old Joshua Brandon Vallum was sentenced to 49 years in prison for the killing of transgender woman Mercedes Williamson in Mississippi after he pleaded guilty to a federal hate crime. In his guilty plea, Vallum acknowledged he would not have killed Williamson if she was not transgender.
Vallum’s case never went to trial, but it was the first to be prosecuted under the act, while Ritter’s was the first to go to trial under it.
The FBI said the LGBTQIA+ community needs to know the agency is fighting for their protections, the department said in a release Thursday.
“We want members of the LGBTQIA+ community to feel heard and to feel comfortable being who they are,” FBI Civil Rights Unit Supervisory Special Agent Anthony Snead, Jr. said. “Because no one should be victimized for being who they are.”
The-CNN-Wire
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