Duterte pardons US Marine for transgender killing

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has pardoned a US marine, freeing him from imprisonment over the 2014 killing of transgender woman Jennifer Laude. 

Joseph Scott Pemberton, 25, was convicted of homicide in 2015 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for the killing of Laude, who was found strangled in a motel bathroom in Olongapo City, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Manila.

Duterte said he decided to pardon Pemberton because he was not treated fairly after opponents stopped his early release for good conduct in detention. 

"It's my decision to pardon," Duterte said he had told the justice minister in discussing the case. "You have not treated Pemberton fairly. So I will release him. Pardon, no one can question that."

Duterte, known to be a vocal critic of US security policies, made the surprising announcement on Monday, adding: "If there is a time where you are called upon to be fair, be fair."

Laude's family, as well as the LGBT community, have condemned Duterte's decision and called it a grave injustice, family lawyer Virginia Suarez said.

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Pemberton 'still a killer'

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, who once acted as a lawyer for the Laude family, said Duterte's pardon would allow Pemberton to be immediately released from detention. 

"The president has erased the punishment that should be imposed on Pemberton. What the president did not erase was the conviction of Pemberton. He's still a killer," Roque told reporters.

Roque said no explanation was needed because the granting "of pardon and parole is not a function of the judiciary but the executive." It's "one of the most presidential of all presidential powers," he said, adding that the Justice Department was planning a separate appeal.

Pemberton's lawyer, Rowena Garcia-Flores, told The Associated Press news agency that Pemberton was already aware of Duterte's decision when she phoned him.

"I heard the news,'' Garcia-Flores quoted Pemberton as saying. "I'm very happy."

Human rights group Karapatan has slammed the pardon as a "despicable and shameless mockery of justice and servility to US imperialist interests."

The killing of Laude has led to calls from some in the Philippines to end the US military presence in the former US colony. Washington and Manila are bound by a mutual defense treaty.

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Killing in Olongapo

Pemberton, an anti-tank missile operator from Massachusetts, was one of thousands of American and Philippine military personnel who took part in joint exercises in the Southeast Asian country in 2014.

He and other Marines were on leave after the exercises and met Laude at a bar in Olongapo, a former US Navy base.

Laude was later found dead with her head slumped in a toilet bowl in a motel room.

In his testimony, Pemberton admitted choking Laude until she became unconscious, but claimed she was still breathing when he left.

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He said that he found the experience of Laude giving him oral sex without disclosing she was transgender "so revolting and disgusting."

In December 2015, a judge convicted Pemberton of homicide, adding that she downgraded the charge because factors such as cruelty had not been proven.

Under a visiting forces agreement between the US and the Philippines, Pemberton was allowed to be held in a special cell at the Philippine military's headquarters in Manila instead of a state penitentiary.

mvb/dj (AP, dpa)