US man guilty of killing transgender woman in gender identity hate crime first

A man has been found guilty of killing a transgender woman in the US's first federal trial over an alleged hate crime based on gender identity.

Jurors in South Carolina decided that Daqua Lameek Ritter shot dead Dime Doe in August 2019 for that reason.

During the trial, witnesses testified that prior to the killing Ritter became agitated after his girlfriend had learned about his affair with Doe.

It was not immediately known what prison term Ritter was now facing.

Ritter shot Doe three times after luring her to drive to a remote rural community in the south-eastern US state four years ago, prosecutors argued during the four-day trial.

They said he had acted to silence her after their affair had been exposed in the small town of Allendale.

Ritter then fled to New York - but was later arrested.

On Friday, he was also convicted of using a firearm in connection with the crime and obstructing justice.

America has already seen prosecutions based on gender identity - but none of them actually went to trial.

In 2017, a man in the southern state of Mississippi was given a 49-year jail term as part of a plea deal over the killing of a young transgender woman.

Crimes motivated by hate and bias increased 11.6% in the US in 2021, according to an FBI report released last year.

More than 9,000 incidents were tallied in the document, the highest number since the FBI started tracking the data in 1990.