First federal gender-based hate crime trial in U.S. begins in S.C.
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 inside 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 on Aug. 4, 2019, just days 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 Dime Doe into driving into 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.
He was arrested on charges of hate crime and murder 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 passing 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.
With News Wire Services
