He hadn’t set out that day to become a murderer…
Joseph Scott Pemberton, at 19 years old, was inadvertently going to start an international incident on October 11, 2014, that was going to cause protests to erupt on the streets of the Philippines and cause a major headache for the occupant of the White House thousands of miles away.
Pemberton was in the Philippines at the time to take part, as a Lance Corporal in the US Marine Corps, in a joint exercise between the two countries. The incident that was going to cause such controversy occurred after the exercises had ended and some of the US troops were allowed on shore to unwind.
The Ambyanz Disco was their destination, a popular bar in Olongapo that was a regular haunt of the visiting troops and the personnel stationed at the local Naval base. The Americans had maintained their presence in this region since 1901, realizing the strategic importance of having a Naval Station in this zone; that presence had helped the city to flourish.
Such was the size and influence of the base, that thousands of Filipinos were employed directly and indirectly by the Americans, many of whom chose at one time or another to join the Navy to escape their simple life of subsistence farming.
Even after the base was relinquished back to the Filipinos in the 1950s, joint military exercises continued regularly, contributing to the thriving city. In a nutshell, the American servicemen were always welcome.
But there were occasionally problems. Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton was about to fall foul of the law like no other US serviceman before him.
At the bar, music blaring, having a good time with his shipmates, Pemberton soon spotted Jennifer Laude through the throng. Approaching her, it wasn’t long before they were hitting it off, chatting away, each quickly feeling a mutual attraction.
After a few drinks together, he suggested that they go over to the nearby Celzone Lodge to get to know each other better. Even though she was engaged at the time, Jennifer decided to go with Pemberton to the hotel.
Laughing, they left the bar with some of Jennifer’s friends who went their separate ways on reaching the hotel.
At the hotel room, events took an unpredictable turn within a mere 30 minutes of their arrival. Pemberton, visibly shocked, shaken, fled the room in a panic, leaving the room door slightly ajar behind him.
The hastily departed room was a chaotic scene. Furniture was strewn everywhere, used condoms littered the floor, lamps were overturned, and, slumped awkwardly on the bathroom floor, lay Jennifer Laude’s dead body.
Her naked form was partially covered, her neck was badly bruised from strangulation marks, and her head was still submerged in the toilet.
The very next morning Pemberton was arrested for her murder while still on board his ship. At first, he denied killing her, citing self-defense. But when he was brought before a judge the following March, his plea had changed to guilty, but his reason for killing her, his excuse for committing murder, was a trans panic defense.
Lance Corporal Pemberton testified that he hadn’t known when he had taken Laude back to the hotel that she was a transgender person, that he hadn’t been aware of her previous gender until after he had had sex with her, that he didn’t have a clue that she had been born a male.
That revelation had triggered something inside him, he stated, that had ended up in the unfortunate death of 26-year-old Jennifer Laude. He admitted that they had fought, but maintained his self-defense argument despite the marks on Laude’s throat and the position she had been found in.
The public reaction when the news broke of the murder of a transgender at the hands of a US Marine was vitriolic.
Protests erupted across the Philippines by transgender rights activists immediately and only got louder and angrier as the case progressed. The people wanted revenge for the victim, wanted the murderer to be fully punished for his crime, while her family just wanted justice.
There were rumors of a bribe being offered to Laude’s family to reduce the charge from murder to homicide which would carry a lesser penalty, but they were unsubstantiated. Justice was screamed for at every protest, was scrawled boldly on every banner waved angrily outside the courthouse, and those voices could not be silenced nor the family bought off.
When the judge spoke at the end of the trial, his verdict was heard loud and clear across the country. In December 2015, Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton, a United States Marine, was found guilty of homicide and sent to jail for up to 12 years.
Sort of.
There can be no doubt that the Americans had had a strong influence on the outcome of the trial, financially invested in Pemberton’s trial expenses and bringing to bear the full force of the United States in an effort to free one of their own.
Even after his guilty verdict was handed down, the Americans had ensured that Lance Corporal Pemberton would not be languishing in New Bilibid Prison. That place was an overcrowded hellhole, a sweltering, disease-ridden cesspit, where the temperature in the summer was nothing short of brutal.
Imprisoned there, he wouldn’t have survived for long as a foreigner packed into a tiny cell with too many evil-eyed cellmates who hated Americans.
Instead, the US Navy had ensured that he was stationed in a converted, air-conditioned shipping container on Camp Aguinaldo, a military base under their control. Hardly a prison for a convicted murderer.
Still, although not as long a term as the family had wanted, and his luxury prison cell hardly a punishment, at least Pemberton had been found guilty and would be robbed of his freedom for over a decade.
If only that was the case.
In September 2020, Pemberton was pardoned, his conviction expunged and freed to return to the States by President Rodrigo Duterte.
The LGBT community were outraged, and in response, it seemed that the whole country had taken to the streets, angry as all hell when news of his sudden pardon exploded on every news channel and across every newspaper headline.
The marine’s obvious further special treatment sparked political unrest in the Philippines and protests in the United States. Even senators made their displeasure known with President Duterte himself coming under fierce criticism.
Regardless of the backlash, by September 13 Pemberton was back home in America.
Was the decision solely Duterte’s to gain favor with the White House or had pressure been put on Duterte himself by the US to free one of their troops?
To add further insult to the Filipinos, Lance Corporal Pemberton collected over $160,000 on his release, which was the sum of his monthly salary since his incarceration in 2015.
Back on home ground, he was free to get on with his life. Back in the Philippines, the LGBT activists demonstrated fiercely to show their displeasure.
They believed that their President had placed the interests of Donald Trump’s America before the will of one of his citizens.
They feared that the LGBT community in the Philippines was not held to the same standards of justice as the rest of the population by their own President.
They understood completely that Jennifer Laude had been killed because of who she had become, and Pemberton had killed her because of who she had been.
Where was the justice?