Daqua Lameek Ritter, a South Carolina citizen, was sentenced to life in prison for the August 2019 murder of Pebbles LaDime Doe, a Black trans woman from South Carolina, according to a Department of Justice press release.
All charges brought against Ritter in February, including one hate crime offense, one federal firearms count, and one count of obstruction in connection with Doe’s murder, resulted in his conviction and sentence last week. In February, the jury returned a guilty judgment after only four hours of deliberations.
According to the statement, Ritter was the first individual found guilty under the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act for committing violence against a transgender person. The statute previously punished a Mississippi man for murdering a trans woman in 2017, but since South Carolina is one of only two states without a hate crime law, this will be the first time a federal court has tried a gender-based hate crime.
“With today’s sentencing, we are holding the defendant accountable for the senseless murder of Dime Doe, a transgender woman of color,” said principal deputy associate attorney general Benjamin C. Mizer.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke stated that she hopes the verdict “provides a small measure of comfort to Dime’s family, loved ones, and community.” She stated that the statement “sends a clear message—the Justice Department vigorously defends the civil rights of all Americans.” We will utilize all available resources to protect the rights of the LGBTQI+ community, and we will investigate and prosecute perpetrators of transphobic violence in our country.
In August 2019, Ritter took Doe to a rural spot in South Carolina in a car before shooting her three times in the head. When the trial began in February, prosecutors said that Ritter killed Doe after his family discovered their affair and that he did so to “silence her.” Ritter then went to New York to avoid arrest.
Shortly after Doe’s murder, a friend told online magazine Zora that she was “the most loving, happy, joyful, outgoing person you could ever meet.”.
“She was never a sad person,” Dime’s friend Tionna Dunbar told Zora. “You could scarcely get her furious. She constantly kept it upbeat.”
According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 27 individuals will have died as a result of anti-transgender violence by 2024. Approximately half of those were Black transgender women.
