Until 2009, federal hate crime laws did not account for offenses motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity is set to begin Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman and then fled to New York.
The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that in August 2019, Daqua Lameek Ritter coaxed the woman — who is anonymously referred to as “Dime Doe” in court documents — into driving to a sparsely populated rural county in South Carolina. Ritter shot her three times in the head after they reached an isolated area near a relative’s home, according to Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where Ritter was arrested last January.
In recent years there has been a surge in attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. For decades, transgender women of color have faced disproportionately high rates of violence and hate crimes, .
The post First federal gender-based hate crime trial in death of trans woman starts in SC appeared first on TheGrio.
