Man convicted of killing trans woman in SC to be sentenced Thursday

FILE – This combo photo of undated selfie, courtesy of the Dime Doe family, shows Dime Doe, a Black transgender woman. On Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, Daqua Lameek Ritter was found guilty of shooting Doe three times on Aug. 4, 2019, because of her gender identity in the first federal trial based on a bias-motivated crime of that sort. To prove Ritter’s rationale, the Department of Justice relied heavily on evidence that Ritter feared public knowledge of their clandestine relationship would lead to humiliation as a “homosexual” in his rural South Carolina community. (Dime Doe Family via AP, File)

(WCIV) — Daqua Lameek Ritter is set to be sentenced in Columbia Thursday after he was convicted in February on several counts in what was the first federal gender-based hate crime trial, according to a press release from the United States Department of Justice.

Ritter was convicted of a hate crime count, a federal firearms count, and one obstruction of justice count in February of 2024 all arising from the 2019 murder of who is referred to anonymously as Dime Doe, a transgender woman.

Ritter and Doe were in a secretive relationship, according to witness testimony and text messages obtained by the FBI, and that relationship was allegedly made known to Ritter’s friends and girlfriend. Ritter subsequently shot Doe three times in the head with a .22 caliber handgun in a rural South Carolina county to prevent more people from finding out about the relationship, according to prosecutors. He went on to allegedly burn the clothes he was wearing when he committed the murder, asked someone to get rid of the firearm he used, and left South Carolina for New York, where he is from. He was eventually arrested in eastern New York.

“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 in January 2022.

Ritter could face a maximum sentence of life in prison with his sentencing due to be held at the Matthew J. Perry Federal Courthouse in Columbia at 2:30pm Thursday.United States District Judge Sherri Lydon presided over Ritter’s trial and will impose the sentence, according to the DOJ.

In October 2023, Xavier Pinckney of Allendale, a friend of Ritter’s, plead guilty to obstruction of justice after it was revealed he warned Ritter to stay away from Allendale. Pinckney told Ritter he was visited by state police and that somebody was “snitching.”

Anti-trans sentiment and anti-LGBTQ+ attacks based on gender identity and sexual orientation both rose in 2023 according to data from the FBI and Human Rights Campaign, despite a 0.6% decrease in the number of hate crimes reported compared to 2022 and an overall decrease in crime rate nationwide.

“Acts of violence against LGBTQI+ people, including transgender women of color like Dime Doe, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer in a February DOJ releaseafter Ritter’s conviction. “The Justice Department takes seriously all bias-motivated acts of violence and will not hesitate to hold accountable those who commit them. No one should have to live in fear of deadly violence because of who they are.”