Allendale, SC: A man from South Carolina was given his sentence on Thursday after pleading guilty in October 2023 to stopping a probe into the murder of a transgender woman in December 2019.
The U.S. Department of Justice says that 24-year-old Xavier Pinckney was given 45 months in jail for giving state police false and misleading information about the murder of transgender woman Dime Doe.
According to the court papers, Pinckney admitted that he lied to state investigators about seeing Daqua Ritter, the person who is accused of killing Doe, on the morning of her murder and that he used his phone to call and text Dime Doe on the day she was killed.
“The defendant is being held accountable for trying to obstruct an investigation into the tragic murder of a Black transgender woman,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “Acts of violence against LGBTQI+ people, including transgender women of color, are on the rise and have no place in our society. The Justice Department remains steadfast in its commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who target LGBTQI+ people with acts of violence or who try to unlawfully obstruct investigations into these heinous crimes.”
U.S. Attorney Adair F. Boroughs for the District of South Carolina said, “Pinckney’s obstruction slowed down our investigation and slowed down justice for Dime Doe.” Pinckney finally admitted that he lied and helped hide the fact that she had been killed. Nobody who gets in the way of justice will get away with it, as this sentence makes clear.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Allendale County Sheriff’s Office, and Allendale Police Department all helped the FBI Columbia Field Office with their investigation.
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