Background: This combo photo of undated selfie 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. (Dime Doe Family via AP, File). Inset: Daqua Ritter booking photo (YouTube screengrab/WLTX.)
It took a jury four days to make history when it found a man guilty of all charges — including a federal hate crime — for the slaying of Dime Doe, a transgender Black woman lured into the remote woods of South Carolina and shot three times in her head.
Daqua Lameek Ritter, also known as “Quavo,” according to Justice Department prosecutors, is the first person in the United States to be convicted of a federal hate crime related to someone’s gender identity. Doe was 24 years old and murdered, the jury found, because Ritter was embarrassed when she publicly revealed their romantic relationship.
When Ritter coaxed Doe to come to the woods of rural Allendale, South Carolina, he gunned her down in cold blood because she was transgender, prosecutors said — and this factor specifically allowed jurors to lock in an unprecedented federal hate crime charge.
Ritter was also found guilty of tampering with a witness, victim or informant, and also of a single firearm charge.
A paperless entry on the docket reviewed Tuesday shows Ritter is next expected to attend a status conference on Feb. 29 before U.S. District Judge Sherri Lydon.
When the grand jury first indicted Ritter, they agreed that he knowingly lied to police on the day Doe was murdered. He had claimed he had not been in Doe’s car during a traffic stop on Aug. 4, 2019, roughly three hours before her death, and just 3.5 miles away from where her body was eventually found. Ritter lied about his whereabouts multiple times, the grand jury found.
When authorities found Doe, she was in a parked car with three gun shot wounds to her head.
It took the jury just a few hours to convict. Columbia, South Carolina, NBC affiliate WIS reported that when the verdict was read, Doe’s present family members emitted an audible gasp inside the courtroom.
More than two dozen witnesses testified at the trial, the outlet reported. Evidence showed that Ritter’s former girlfriend, Delasia Green, recalled him flying into fits of anger and rage when the subject of his sexuality came up.
When rumors swirled among his peers about his sexuality, witnesses who once knew Ritter well said he had issued threats to Doe, including saying that he would beat her up if she spoke out about her relationship.
WIS reported that it was an uncle of Ritter’s who lived close to where Doe’s body was found who alerted police to the grisly discovery of her corpse.
Ritter tried to hide what he had done by burning the clothes he worse during the murder and also by attempting to hide the firearm he used to kill Doe. But witnesses, including a cousin called to testify against Ritter, said he admitted to killing the transgender woman.
Ritter implored his cousin to keep the horrific secret under wraps, the witness said, according to a WIS report from Feb. 22.
The Justice Department said Monday that Ritter’s criminal trial for violence against a transgender person was its first ever brought under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, legislation that passed in 2009 allowing for the prosecution of federal hate crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
“Years of collaborative work were validated by a jury’s unanimous verdict: guilty. This sends a message of hope to our community that we will fight for the rights of those targeted for their gender identity or sexual orientation. As Dime Doe’s loved ones remember her, we hope this verdict provides them some comfort,” U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs for the District of South Carolina said in a statement Saturday.
Whether Ritter will appeal is unclear. His attorney did not immediately return a request seeking comment about his impending status conference.
Though Ritter was the first to go to trial under the Shepard and Byrd Act, the first person ever found guilty of a federal hate crime tied to transgender identity occurred in 2017. That involved the murder of transgender woman Mercedes Williamson of Mississippi, as Law&Crime previously reported. Willamson’s killer, Joshua Vallum, pleaded guilty to the federal hate crime charge in December 2016. As part of his plea, Vallum admitted that he murdered Williamson because she was transgender.
A year before Dime Doe was murdered, the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute reported that data showed transgender people were over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, including rape, sexual assault and aggravated or simple assault.
The same data also showed that year that one in four transgender women who were victimized thought what had happened to them was a hate crime, compared to one in 10 cisgender women under similar circumstances. More recently, the Human Rights Campaign reported that in 2021, at least 59 transgender people were fatally shot or killed, the majority of whom were Black or Latin transgender women.
An attorney for the Doe family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A sentencing date for Ritter has not yet been set.
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