TIMELINE: Revisiting the Jennifer Laude murder case
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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 24) — The case involving former American Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton is now deemed closed after he withdrew his appeal at the Supreme Court to review his conviction for killing Filipino transgender woman Jennifer Laude in 2014.
The high court’s third division on June 15 granted Pemberton’s urgent motion to withdraw his petition to review the guilty ruling issued by an Olongapo court.
In the decision released to the media on Monday, the Supreme Court said Pemberton has accepted that his conviction will become final and executory once he withdraws the criminal and civil aspects of the appeal he filed in 2017.
“This case is considered closed and terminated,” the resolution read.
The former Marine withdrew his appeal on June 2, the same day the Philippines terminated the suspension of the Visiting Forces Agreement — the decades-old military pact between the Philippines and United States.
Pemberton will continue to serve the rest of his sentence. The American soldier has been detained at the custodial center in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City since 2015.
The Olongapo Regional Trial court sentenced Pemberton to six to 12 years of imprisonment for homicide on December 1, 2015. His prison sentence was reduced to to a maximum of 10 years. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction in 2017.
He was convicted of homicide after 26-year-old Laude was found lifeless — naked, neck blackened with strangulation marks, and head rammed into a toilet — in a motel room in Olongapo City after their night out on October 11, 2014. The then-19-year-old Pemberton admitted to choking her after learning that she was also a “man.”
