Man found guilty of transgender woman’s murder in landmark federal hate crime trial

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS/Gray News) - A South Carolina jury found a man guilty of murdering a Black transgender woman in the nation’s first federal hate crime trial for a gender identity-based murder.

The case involves the killing of 24-year-old Dime Doe, who was described by friends as “the life the party.” The Justice Department accused Daqua Ritter of shooting Doe three times in the head along a rural road in August 2019.

Prosecutors argued that Ritter killed Doe in a fit of rage to stop word of their intimate relationship from spreading in the small community of Allendale, WIS reports.

After a little less than four hours of deliberation Friday, jurors rendered guilty verdicts against Ritter on three counts, which included the use of a firearm in connection with the shooting and obstructing justice.

Ritter faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.

As the verdict was read, an audible gasp could be heard from Doe’s family members, who attended each day of the trial.

In closing arguments, prosecutors argued that this was really a “simple case” about who killed Doe. They said the defendant, Ritter, was the only person with the motive and the opportunity to do so.

Jurors heard testimony from 28 witnesses over four days and saw nearly 100 pieces of evidence, including parts of two interviews of Ritter with state and federal law enforcement, where he was accused of lying to investigators about seeing Doe the day of the killing.

“The jury also heard testimony that her killer, Daqua Ritter, believed this was going to be a cold case. It is not a cold case anymore,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina Brook Andrews while speaking to reporters following the verdict. “The jury has told us who did it, and they have held him accountable.”

Prosecutors said Ritter wanted to stop word of his intimate relationship with Doe from spreading. His girlfriend at the time, Delasia Green, had already started asking questions, and he angrily told her not to question his sexuality. One of Ritter’s “boys” from Allendale testified that he threatened to beat Doe for speaking about their relationship.

In texts obtained by the FBI, Doe expressed that she was afraid of Ritter before the murder. Their relationship, the text messages indicate, had turned contentious in the month leading up to the killing, and Ritter at one point reminded Doe to delete their exchanges on the TextNow app.

They sent 749 texts to each other and spoke over the phone for nearly four hours during this period.

In his closing argument, Andrew Manns, a DOJ trial attorney from the Civil Rights Division, argued that Ritter lured Doe to that secluded area in the country on Aug. 4, 2019, and planned an “easy escape route” after the killing.

An ex-girlfriend of Ritter’s uncle, who lived just half a mile from the abandoned road where Doe’s body was discovered slumped over the steering wheel of her car, testified that she saw Ritter the afternoon of the murder acting strangely and seeking a ride back into town.

After the murder, Ritter took steps to cover it up, the government said, by destroying evidence, burning his clothes, hiding the murder weapon, lying to law enforcement and encouraging his friends not to talk about what they knew.

“Don’t let his cover-up work,” Manns implored jurors.

Prosecutors laid out a timeline of events from the day of the murder and explained that only Ritter could have been with Doe during the “murder window.”

Ritter was in the passenger seat of Doe’s car at a 3:04 p.m. traffic stop; though he allegedly lied to state law enforcement about being there. His face was not visible because the seat was reclined, but DNA evidence, along with body camera footage that shows his distinctive wrist tattoo, placed him in the car.

At 3:22 p.m., Doe sent the last text she would ever send to her mother: “I’m alright jus a $72 ticket.”

The government placed the shooting somewhere between 3:55 and 4:41 p.m.

At 4:41 p.m., Xavier Pinckney, who has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about the case, made a call to an unknown number, which has been identified as Doe’s phone. Ritter, he said, answered it and asked where his groups of friends were located.

Over what several witnesses described as a “burn barrel” later that evening, Ritter allegedly told one friend, “Nobody gonna have to worry about [Doe] anymore.”

A family member also alleges Ritter confessed to the murder the following day and asked her and her son to keep it a secret.

Days after Doe’s killing, Ritter went back to New York and was keeping tabs on the investigation, according to the lead FBI agent on the case. He told his friends, who Manns said are “not boy scouts,” not to cooperate with police and asked Pinckney to delete their Facebook messages.

The defense asserted Ritter’s innocence throughout the trial and argued that another person could have killed Doe.

Joshua Kendrick, Ritter’s defense attorney, in his closing argument said that a guilty verdict would require a tremendous amount of stretching by jurors and grappling with multiple inconsistencies. He sought to cast doubt on the testimony from Ritter’s Allendale “crew of clowns.”

Kendrick also invoked Sherlock Holmes, saying that Holmes believed circumstantial evidence is tricky because it points to one conclusion, but if the perspective is shifted, it points to an entirely different one.

In reply, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Garner urged jurors to render a guilty verdict on each count.

“You don’t need Sherlock Holmes” to solve this murder, he said.

South Carolina is one of only two states in the nation that does not have a state hate crimes law.

“This case stands as a testament to our committed effort to fight violence that is targeted against those who may identify as a member of the opposite sex for their sexual orientation or for any other protected characteristic,” Andrews said.

Prior to 2009 and the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, federal hate crime laws did not account for crimes committed based on gender identity.

The first conviction under this statute came in 2017 after a Mississippi man pleaded guilty to the 2016 murder of his ex-girlfriend, who was transgender.

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