A court in Manila today (Dec. 1) declared Joseph Scott Pemberton, a lance corporal in the US Marines, guilty of homicide in the case of Jennifer Laude, a Filipino transgender woman who was found dead in an Olongapo City hotel room last year.
Pemberton, 20, was sentenced to between six and 12 years of prison. He had initially been charged with murder, which carries more severity than homicide, but the charges were downgraded because the court decided there was no “treachery” in the killing, according to the New York Times.
In October 2014, Pemberton and Laude, 26, reportedly left a nightclub together in Olongapo City, some 100 miles north of Manila, and went to a hotel where, according to his defense attorneys, Pemberton fought with Laude upon discovering that she was transgender. He testified that he choked her but then tried to revive her, and that she was still alive, albeit slumped over a toilet bowl, when he left the premises.
The case has sparked debate over the US military’s presence in the Philippines; Pemberton was one of thousands of American troops participating in a joint training exercise with Philippine troops, and the US has been more assertive in the area lately, supporting the Philippines in its territorial dispute with China.
It’s also raised the issue of which government has the right to custody of Pemberton; the judge ordered that he be jailed at the New Bilibid prison, a Philippine facility in Muntinlupa city, but his attorneys told the Times that they would resist that option. A decades-old agreement between the two countries says that American military members being prosecuted by the Philippines can remain in US custody until all judicial proceedings end. For the past year, Pemberton has been confined at Camp Aguinaldo, a Philippine military base, in a modified shipping container cell guarded by US Marines.