COLUMBIA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) – The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity is set to begin Tuesday – a trial over the Allendale murder of LaDime Doe, a Black transgender woman.
Before lunch, the jury had heard opening arguments, and three witnesses had testified. The lunch break was supposed to last until 1:45 p.m.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Lameek Ritter coaxed Doe into driving to a sparsely populated rural county in South Carolina.
The indictment alleges the motive was Doe’s actual and perceived gender identity.
The first government witness Tuesday was Allendale County Sheriff James Freeman, who was a captain with the Allendale County Sheriff’s Office at the time of the murder.
He was working a separate traffic stop when he got the call that there was a body slumped over in the seat of a vehicle. He said he drove 15 to 20 minutes to what he calls a wooded area with no residential or business building in sight.
There, he saw a white Chevrolet Impala backed into the woods with a female slumped in the seat.
He felt for a pulse, didn’t find one and called emergency medical crews.
He noticed a shoe outside the car that resembled one that was inside the car.
He asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to take over the case and then went to Ritter’s grandmother’s house for interviews.
On cross-examination, the defense pulled out an incident report to show the call came in at 5:51 p.m.
The incident report states that the car was runnning in park.
Days after the murder, he said he got a tip to go to Myers Road in Allendale regarding burned clothes.
He went there and found a burn barrel where something had been burned but nothing was inside, according to Freeman.
The second witness was a SLED agent who described the scene.
Prosecutors showed about 30 photos and had him describe what they showed.
They included the car off Concord Church Road, Dime slumped over to the side, blood in the seat and blood in her curly hair.
There was a black high heel and a pair of black Converses on the passenger floorboard.
Beside the high heel was a gun shell.
There was a show in the grass matching the black high heel on the passenger-side floor.
On the driver side were two gun shells – one in the seat and one in the floor.
There was a red iPhone with a driver’s license in the clear case. The driver’s license bore the name Ernest Devontay Doe.
Deadly trend
In recent years, there has been a surge in attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, and Doe is one of several transgender and gender-fluid murder victims in the CSRA. Others include:
The murder motive
The government has said Ritter’s friends and girlfriend learned about a sexual relationship between Ritter and the woman in the month prior to the killing. The two had been close friends, according to the defense, and were related through Ritter’s aunt and the woman’s uncle.
Prosecutors believe the revelation, which prompted Ritter’s girlfriend to hurl a homophobic slur, made Ritter “extremely upset.”
“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 last January.
Ritter shot her three times in the head after they reached an isolated area near a relative’s home, according to Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where Ritter was arrested last January.
The hate crime count against Ritter carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
What to expect during the trial
Government lawyers plan to present witness testimony about Ritter’s location and text messages with the woman, in which he allegedly persuaded her to take the ride. Evidence also includes video footage taken at a traffic stop that captures him in the woman’s car hours before her death.
Other evidence includes DNA from the woman’s car and testimony from multiple people who say that Ritter privately confessed to them about the fatal shooting.
Ritter’s lawyers have said it is no surprise that Ritter might have been linked to the woman’s car, considering their intimate ties. The defense has argued that no physical evidence points to Ritter as the perpetrator. Further, the defense has said the witnesses’ claims that Ritter tried to dispose of evidence are inconsistent.
Ritter could receive multiple life sentences if convicted by a jury. In addition to the hate crimes charge, Ritter faces two other counts that he committed murder with a firearm and misled investigators.
A historic case
For decades, transgender women of color have faced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In 2022, the number of gender identity-based hate crimes reported by the FBI increased by 37% compared to the previous year.
Until 2009, federal hate crime laws did not account for offenses motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The first conviction involving a victim targeted for their gender identity came in 2017. A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman received a 49-year prison sentence.
But Tuesday marks the first time that such a case has ever been brought to trial, according to Brook Andrews, the assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina. Never before has a federal jury decided whether to punish someone for a crime based on the victim’s gender identity.
WRDW’s Sydney Hood and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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