[ad_1]
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) – The first federal trial for a hate crime based on gender identity continues Wednesday. Dime Doe, a black transgender woman, murdered in Arendelle.
During witness testimony, the jury heard from Daqua Ritter’s ex-girlfriend, Delashia Green.
Green and Ritter were in a relationship at the time of Doe’s murder. Greene was arrested for failing to comply with a subpoena to testify or speak to the government.
Green said she accessed Ritter’s phone and said she had a “gut feeling” and wanted to check his texting apps, Facebook and text messages. She said she saw text messages exchanged between Ritter and an unsaved number, which was later determined to be Doe’s phone number.
Green said he asked Ritter about the dime. She said he told her not to “question his sexuality” and was angry that she confronted him about the text messages.
The jury also heard from several Allendale locals, including friends of Mr. Doe and Mr. Ritter.
An FBI special agent also testified and presented text messages between Doe and Ritter.
On Tuesday, the jury heard opening arguments and witnesses testified.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Ramek Ritter induced Doe to drive to a sparsely populated, rural county in South Carolina.
The indictment alleges the motive was Doe’s actual and perceived gender identity.
In opening arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Garner portrayed Mr. Ritter as someone who was working cautiously to avoid the ridicule he would face if his secret relationship were exposed. The two met as teenagers when he traveled from his grandmother’s house in Brooklyn to visit his family’s property in Allendale.
The defense said the two were close friends and related through Ritter’s aunt and the woman’s uncle.
But Garner said Ritter was “furious” when he learned that one of Doe’s friends knew about their sexual relationship. Garner said Ritter threatened to beat her if she shared her information with anyone, but Ritter repeatedly instructed her not to do so.
The government said Ritter’s girlfriend learned of Ritter’s relationship with Doe the month before the murder. Prosecutors believe the revelations, which led to Ritter’s girlfriend hurling homophobic slurs at him, left him “extremely upset”.
Garner cited text messages in which Ritter allegedly complained to Doe about the mockery a week before her death.
“He killed her to keep her quiet,” Garner told jurors.
They claim Mr. Ritter lied about his location in an interview with state police later that day. Garner said a “nervous” Ritter walked to his uncle’s house, about a half-mile from the crime scene, and asked for a ride home. Prosecutors say Ritter asked others to help him burn clothes, hide the weapon and mislead police about his whereabouts on the day of the murder.
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 another traffic stop when he received a call about a body slumped over a car seat. He said he drove 15 to 20 minutes to an area called a wooded area where there were no residential or commercial establishments in sight.
There he saw a white Chevrolet Impala backing into the woods with a woman slumped in the seat.
He looked for a pulse but couldn’t find one and called paramedics.
He noticed a pair of shoes outside the car that looked similar to the ones 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 to interview her.
On cross-examination, the defense produced an incident report showing that the call was made at 5:51 p.m.
According to the accident report, the car was traveling in a park.
A few days after the murder, he said he received a tip about burnt clothing that directed him to Myers Road in Allendale.
Freeman said he went there and found a burnt barrel with something on it but nothing inside.
The second witness was a SLED agent who described the scene.
The prosecutor showed them about 30 photos and asked them to explain what they saw.
That included the car falling off Concord Church Road, with Dime slumped on its side, blood on the seat and blood in his curls.
There were black high heels and black Converse on the floorboard of the passenger seat.
Next to the high heels was a gun shell.
On the passenger side floor, there was a show going on in the grass that matched the black high heels.
There were two shells on the driver’s side, one in the seat and one on the floor.
Inside the clear case was a red iPhone with a driver’s license inside. The name on his driver’s license was Ernest Devontay Doe.
deadly tendency
Attacks against the LGBTQ+ community have skyrocketed in recent years, and Doe is one of several CSRA transgender and gender fluid murder victims. Others include:
For decades, transgender women of color have faced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The number of gender-based hate crimes reported by the FBI in 2022 increased by 37% from the previous year.
Until 2009, federal hate crime laws did not consider crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The first conviction of a victim targeted because of her gender identity was in 2017. A Mississippi man who pleaded guilty to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman has been sentenced to 49 years in prison.
But Tuesday is the first time such a case will go to trial, South Carolina Assistant District Attorney Brooke Andrews said. Never before has a federal jury decided whether to punish someone for a crime based on the victim’s gender identity.
WRDW’s Sidney Hood and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright 2024 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.
[ad_2]
Source link