USA marine guilty of Filipina transgender killing

Marine Joseph Pemberton was found guilty of killing a transgender Filipino woman a year ago.

The Associated Press reported the court sentenced Pemberton to 6-12 years in prison, with credit for the time he has spent incarcerated at a detention facility outside of the Philippine capital of Manila.

The case has fueled public clamor for a review of the Visiting Forces Agreement between the two countries, and a pending defense accord that would increase the number of USA military personnel in the country for war games.

Pemberton, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was on a break after participating in joint military exercises in the country. He and a group of Marines were on leave afterward and met Laude and her friends at a bar in Olongapo, northwest of Manila.

“This is not quite a victory”, Laude’s sister, Malou, said. Pemberton said he used a choke hold to subdue Laude but claimed she was still breathing when he left and that someone else must have killed her. A shipmate testified that after Pemberton returned to his vessel, he said, “I think I killed a he-she”.

Though he had been charged with murder, Pemberton was convicted of homicide, as the judge noted that he acted out of “passion and obfuscation”, and that Mr Laude deliberately hid his true gender. “He said they began fighting when he discovered that she had a penis”, said Emilie Fe Delos Santos, lead prosecutor in the case. “My son’s life is not wasted”, she said after the verdict, the AP wrote.

Jabalde ruled that Pemberton was considered a “national prisoner” under Philippine law, and that he must suffer imprisonment at the NBP or any other national penal colony.

“We are very angry that the court considered these mitigating circumstances”, he said, pounding a table while addressing journalists. At the time of her death, Laude was engaged to a German man named Marc Sueselbeck and had applied for a visa to be with him there, which was denied.

The prosecution and Laude’s family were dissatisfied that Pemberton was convicted of the lower charge of homicide. After discovering she was a transgender woman, Pemberton first strangled Laude, then dunked her head into a toilet bowl.

Pemberton has the right to appeal the verdict and the sentence.

A Philippines court judge found a USA marine guilty of killing a transgender woman in Philippines on Tuesday, according to CNN. United States officials were not immediately available for comment.

In a reversal of that policy, last year, the Philippines signed a 10-year agreement to allow the United States to post troops, weapons and materials at several bases, including Subic Bay.