Matthew J. Perry Jr. U.S. Courthouse in Columbia. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A South Carolina man is sentenced to life in prison for murdering a 24-year-old Black transgender woman after rumors spread in rural Allendale that the two of them were in a sexual relationship, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Daqua Ritter’s life sentence Thursday followed the first trial for a federal hate crime involving gender identity. A jury found him guilty in February of all charges: murder involving a firearm, killing her because of her gender, and misleading investigators.
Jury convicts man for federal hate crime in 2019 slaying of SC transgender woman
“This sentence reflects the gravity of Ritter’s horrific crime,” said Steve Jensen, special agent in charge of the FBI Columbia office, said in a news release announcing the sentence.
Dime Doe was shot three times in the head on Aug. 4, 2019.
Prosecutors proved Ritter used a friend’s phone to text Doe that afternoon to ask her to pick him up. Her body was found slumped over the wheel of her car on an abandoned property in Allendale County, one of South Carolina’s poorest and most rural counties, with a population of just 8,000.
Ritter burned the clothes he was wearing during the crime, asked a friend to get rid of the gun, and repeatedly lied to officers, prosecutors said.
“From the smallest of communities, like Allendale, to anywhere in South Carolina where hate and injustice occur, we will continue to fight for the rights of those targeted because of their race, their religion, their gender identity or sexual orientation, or their ability,” said Adair Ford Boroughs, U.S. attorney for South Carolina.
Ritter’s trial was the first under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
In 2017, a Mississippi man was sentenced to 49 years in prison for killing a transgender 17-year-old over her gender, but he pleaded guilty, avoiding a trial.
South Carolina remains one of just two states in the nation without a specific hate crime law. Ritter used a gun from a different state, prosecutors said, raising the case to the federal level.
The South Carolina House has repeatedly passed a bill that would add penalties for people convicted of committing a crime due to their victim’s race, gender or sexual orientation. The most recent version that cleared the House in 2023 would have added up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine to a sentence, if the conviction was for a violent crime. The Senate has repeatedly declined to debate it.
The bill was named for the late Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was among the nine victims gunned down in 2015 by a white supremacist at a historic Black church in Charleston. Their killer, Dylann Roof, was also convicted of federal hate crimes. He was sentenced to death in federal court. He pleaded guilty to nine counts of murder and attempted murder in state court to avoid a second death sentence.
By state law, a murder conviction carries a minimum sentence of 30 years to life in prison without the possibility of parole.