South Carolina man gets life in prison for murdering black transgender woman

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina man was sentenced to life in federal prison Thursday for the murder of a black transgender woman after their secret sexual relationship was exposed.

U.S. District Judge Sherri A. Lydon sentenced Daqua Lameek Ritter in federal court in Columbia. Ritter was the first person in the country to be convicted of killing someone based on their gender identity.

Ritter was convicted of a hate crime in February for the 2019 shooting of Dime Doe.

“Dime Doe was a courageous woman,” U.S. Attorney Adair Ford Boroughs told reporters outside the courthouse after the verdict was handed down. “She lived and loved herself, and no one deserves to lose their life for that.”

Prosecutors asked for a life sentence without parole based on federal sentencing guidelines. Defense attorneys asked for a sentence that would let Ritter out of jail one day, saying there was no evidence the killing was planned. In their request, they included letters asking for mercy to his mother, sister, grandmother and his two young children.

Ritter shot Doe three times with a .22 caliber handgun after rumors emerged about Ritter’s relationship with Doe in the small town of Allendale, prosecutors said.

Doe’s close friends stated that it was no secret in Allendale that she had begun her social transition as a woman shortly after graduating from high school. She started dressing in skirts, getting her nails done and wearing extensions. She and her friends discussed the guys they were hanging out with — including Ritter, whom she met during one of his many summer visits from New York to stay with family.

But text messages obtained by the FBI suggested Ritter wanted to keep their relationship as secret as possible, prosecutors said. He reminded her to delete their communications from her phone, and hundreds of text messages sent in the month before her death were deleted.

Ritter told Doe that Delasia Green, his main girlfriend at the time, had insulted him with a homophobic slur after he learned of their affair.

Ritter’s lawyers said the sampling represented only a “snapshot” of their messages. They pointed to other conversations where Doe encouraged Ritter or thanked her for her kindness.

During the trial, prosecutors presented police interviews in which Ritter said he did not see Doe the day she died. But body camera video from a Doe traffic stop showed Ritter’s distinctive left wrist tattoo on a person in the passenger seat hours before police found her slumped in the car, parked in a driveway.

No physical evidence pointed to Ritter. State police never processed a gunshot residue test he voluntarily took, and the couple’s intimate relationship and frequent car rides made it no surprise that Ritter would have been with her, attorney Lindsey Vann said.

Co-defendant Xavier Pinckney was sentenced earlier this year to three years and nine months in prison for lying to investigators about what he knew about Doe’s murder.

Although federal officials have previously prosecuted hate crimes based on gender identity, the cases have never gone to trial. A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence in 2017 as part of a plea deal after admitting to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.

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Associated Press reporter Adrian Sainz contributed from Memphis, Tennessee.