First federal gender-based hate crime trial begins

The nation’s first federal hate crime trial based on gender identity got underway Tuesday in South Carolina, nearly five years after the fatal shooting of a Black transgender woman whose body was found in a parked car in Allendale County, near the Georgia border.

Federal prosecutors accuse 26-year-old Daqua Lameek Ritter of shooting Pebbles LaDime “Dime” Doe to death because of her “actual or perceived gender identity.”

The body of the 24-year-old victim was found Aug. 4, 2019, just weeks after the killing of another transgender woman of color in South Carolina; Denali Berries Stuckey, 29, was found lying by the side of a road in North Charleston on July 20.

Federal prosecutors allege Ritter coaxed Doe into driving to an isolated area in South Carolina’s least populated county. He then shot her three times in the head before fleeing to New York, according to Ben Garner, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina.

Ritter was arrested on hate crime and murder charges last year. The hate crime count carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

The trial, which is expected to last one to two weeks, is the first involving a victim who was targeted because of their gender identity, according to Brook Andrews, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina.

Until the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, federal hate crime laws didn’t include offenses based on a person’s actual or perceived gender identity or sexual orientation.

The first conviction of a person accused of killing a victim based on her gender identity came in 2017 when a Mississippi man pleaded guilty to hate crime charges stemming from the murder of a 17-year-old trans woman.

But until now, no federal jury has been asked to decide whether to punish a person accused of committing a crime based on a victim’s gender identity, according to Andrews.