Trial date set for US Marine accused of murdering Filipino transgender
He was transferred from a US warship that was docked in Olongapo Bay
Manila: A Philippine court has scheduled the arraignment of an American marine officer for the alleged murder of a Filipina transgender in late 2014, after the justice department threw out in late January his request to be charged with homicide, sources said.
The Olongapo City Regional Trial Court ordered US Marine Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton to appear for his arraignment on February 23, lawyer Harry Roque said.
Pemberton, 19, was charged with the murder of Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude in the bathroom of Calzone Lodge in Olongapo on October 11. Pemberton will attend his arraignment, his lawyer added.
He is being detained in a container van in a US-controlled facility of the Philippine military headquarters in Metro Manila’s suburban Quezon City.
He was transferred from a US warship that was docked in Olongapo Bay following public outrage over Laude’s murder.
The trial was suspended for 60 days on December 23 after his lawyers claimed that government prosecutors failed to establish abuse of superior strength, cruelty, and treachery when he was accused of killing Laude. The there elements are needed to establish murder.
The justice department upheld last year’s findings of investigators and the decision of Olongapo chief prosecutor Emilie delos Santos that Pemberton must be charged with murder.
The 60-day suspension could delay Pemberton’s conviction, said Roque
The US-Philippine Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), signed in 1998, has a one year prescription for a case involving a US serviceman while engaged in joint war games in the Philippines.
American and Filipino legal experts have conflicting interpretation of VFA’s provision on custody of an accused US serviceman.
In 2006, an American serviceman who was convicted for raping a woman in Olongapo in 2005 was imprisoned in a Philippine jail. But he served time at Manila’s US Embassy after an agreement forged by a Philippine foreign affairs secretary and a former American ambassador. The Supreme Court eventually voided this agreement.
Thee rape victim also retracted her testimony, allegedly in exchange for a green card, (so she could stay in the US), prompting the Court of Appeals to allow the American serviceman to return home in 2009.
