Daqua Lameek Ritter has been found guilty of killing Dime Doe. In a country with an estimated 21,156 murders in 2022, touting one guilty verdict seems like a drop in the bucket. But this verdict is significant not just for the people involved but more broadly for the country’s criminal justice system, the formal institutions designed to enforce, arbitrate, and carry out the laws of society. To better understand, consider the facts of the case. Dime Doe was a transgender woman, a person who identifies with a gender that is different from their biological sex. Ritter is a cisgender man, an individual whose gender identity matches their sex at birth. Ritter was concerned there were rumors about his secret sexual relationship with a trans woman, so he lured Doe out of town and shot her to death.
The importance of this verdict stands not just on the murder of Doe but on the fact that the prosecution was able to successfully argue that Doe was killed because of her gender identity, her inner sense, and her identification as masculine or feminine. For this reason, Doe’s murder was a hate crime, criminal behavior directed at individuals or groups based on race, ethnicity, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion. Sadly, Doe’s murder isn’t the only example of a hate crime in the U.S. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports there were 11,288 hate crime incidents in 2022. Of that number, 59 percent were racially or ethnically motivated, 17 percent were based on religion, and another 17 percent were because of the victim’s sexual orientation.
Of course, hate crimes aren’t the only type of offense in violation of public law or crime. There are eight forms of criminal behavior tracked by the FBI. These are known as index crimes, and they include the following:
- Willful homicide
- Aggravated assault
- Forcible rape
- Larceny over $50
- Robbery
- Motor vehicle theft
- Burglary
- Arson
Other types of crime not on this list include a) cybercrimes, crimes that target the computer systems of an individual or group; b) white collar crimes, nonviolent and financially motivated crimes; and c) terrorism, the use of violence or the threat of violence to influence the political process.
While we may judge these crimes differently based on our morals and the severity of the behavior, these crimes are all just different forms of deviance in that they are violations of social norms. This does not mean they are all handled the same. For example, consider a situation in which a person is stealing pens from work because they don’t want to spend the money to purchase them. They are caught by their supervisor and fired from their job. The decision to fire the employee is a form of informal social control because the supervisor is unofficially reinforcing the social norms not to steal. On the other hand, the trial of Daqua Lameek Ritter used mechanisms of formal social control because it involved groups and organizations whose specific function is to control the behavior of members of societies and reinforce social norms. Groups in society responsible for formal social control include but are not limited to, the police, the FBI, and the Department of Social Services.
The importance of the conviction of Dime Doe’s murder isn’t just in the case itself. It is important in the context of the hate-motivated crimes that have occurred in this country. From the killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was beaten and tortured to death in Wyoming, to the killing of James Byrd Jr., an African American man who was dragged to death behind a truck by three white supremacists in Texas, hate crimes are nothing new, and hate does not discriminate. In the face of these horrors, we are left to wonder when we will learn this lesson.
Thompson is a co-owner of UITAC Publishing. UITAC’s mission is to provide high-quality, affordable, and socially responsible online course materials.
Images used in this blog:
- “Police Crime Scene Blue Light” by geralt is licensed on Pixabay. This image has not been altered.
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“Matthew Shepard murder site” by Tony Webster is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. This image has not been altered.
