The first federal trial in a gender identity-based hate crime begins Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man is accused of killing a Black transgender woman and fleeing to New York.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Ramek Ritter lured a woman, referred to in court documents as Dime Do, and drove her to a sparsely populated, rural county in South Carolina. claims to have gone.
South Carolina Assistant District Attorney Ben Garner said Ritter shot her three times in the head with a .22-caliber handgun after arriving at a secluded area near her uncle’s home.
Attacks against the LGBTQ+ community have skyrocketed in recent years. For decades, transgender women of color have faced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Number of gender-based hate crimes in 2022 reported by FBI This was an increase of 37% compared to the previous year.
And until 2009, federal hate crime laws did not take into account crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The first conviction of a victim targeted because of her gender identity was in 2017.
A Mississippi man was sentenced to 49 years in prison as part of a plea deal after admitting to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.
But Tuesday is the first time such a case will go to trial, South Carolina Assistant District Attorney Brooke Andrews said. Never before has a federal jury decided whether to convict someone of a crime and further punish them based on the victim’s gender identity.
In his opening argument, Garner portrayed Ritter as someone who was working cautiously to avoid the ridicule he would face if his secret relationship were exposed.
The two met as teenagers when he traveled from his grandmother’s home in Brooklyn to visit his family’s estate in Allendale, South Carolina. The defense said the two were close friends and were related through Ritter’s aunt and the woman’s uncle.
But Garner said Ritter was “furious” when he learned that one of Doe’s friends knew about their sexual relationship. Garner said Ritter threatened to beat her if she shared her information with anyone, and he repeatedly instructed her not to do so.
The government said Ritter’s girlfriend learned of Ritter’s relationship with Doe the month before the murder. Prosecutors believe Ritter was “extremely upset” by the revelations, which led to him hurling homophobic slurs at his girlfriend.
Garner cited text messages in which Ritter allegedly complained to Doe about the mockery a week before her death.
“He killed her to keep her quiet,” Garner told jurors.
They claim Mr. Ritter lied about his location in an interview with state police later that day. Garner said a “nervous” Ritter walked to his uncle’s house, about a half-mile from the crime scene, and asked for a ride home.
Prosecutors say Ritter asked others to help him burn clothes, hide the weapon and mislead police about his whereabouts on the day of the murder.
Ritter, who reportedly split his time between South Carolina, where he had a job and a driver’s license, and New York, where he lived with his family, was eventually arrested.
Government lawyers plan to present witness testimony about Ritter’s whereabouts and his text messages with the woman, in which he allegedly persuaded her to take the ride. The evidence includes video footage taken at a traffic stop around 3 p.m. on the day of Doe’s death that shows Ritter’s “distinguished” left wrist in the passenger seat of Ritter’s car. The tattoo is shown, but the face is not.
Other evidence includes DNA taken from the woman’s car and testimony from multiple people who say Ritter personally confessed to the shooting.
Ritter’s lawyer emphasized that the trial will not be about their sexual relationship, but whether Ritter killed Doe.
One of the defense attorneys, Lindsey Vann, argued Tuesday that there was no physical evidence pointing to Ritter as the perpetrator.
Notably, Bunn said the state Law Enforcement Division did not process the bullet residue test that Ritter voluntarily took on the day of the murder.
The defense said it was not surprising that Ritter might have had something to do with Doe’s car, given Ritter’s close relationship with Doe’s car. Additionally, Vann said the video of the traffic stop may have been filmed up to three hours before the death.
The defense added that the witnesses’ claims regarding the disposition of evidence were contradictory.
Vann said Ritter’s friends have given conflicting interviews about details such as the alleged burning of Ritter’s clothes, while facing the threat of federal prosecution if they don’t cooperate.
The lies Mr. Ritter told investigators were the result of a deep-seated fear of being considered a suspect, and were further fueled by local gossip about his relationship with Mr. Ritter, Vann said. said.
Prosecutors do not plan to seek the death penalty, but if a jury convicts Ritter, he could receive multiple life sentences. In addition to the hate crime charge, Ritter faces two other charges: murder with a firearm and misleading investigators.
