PNP tests debunk link to slay, says lawyer

OLONGAPO CITY—A lawyer of US Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton on Monday pointed to findings of forensic experts of the Philippine National Police in debunking evidence tying the soldier to the murder of transgender woman Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude.

American experts, who were presented as prosecution witnesses in June, testified that a condom wrapper found in a motel room where Laude died on Oct. 11 last year bore Pemberton’s fingerprints. The soldier’s lawyers asked the court to allow the PNP Crime Laboratory to reexamine the wrapper.

“The PNP found fingerprints on that condom wrapper but those were not from Pemberton,” Rowena Garcia-Flores, one of Pemberton’s counsels, told reporters here on Monday. “There’s no longer [any] physical evidence linking Pemberton to the crime scene.”

Laude was found dead in the bathroom of the motel room after her companion, a foreigner whom witnesses identified as Pemberton, left their room on the night of Oct. 11, 2014.

The court registered a “not guilty” plea for Pemberton, an antitank missile operator from New Bedford, Massachusetts, after he refused to enter a plea during his arraignment in February.

Pemberton’s lawyers were supposed to present evidence on Monday, but Judge Roline Ginez-Jabalde canceled the hearing to allow defense lawyers to study a court resolution detailing the prosecution’s formal offer of evidence. The prosecution presented its last witness in June.

The resolution said Jabalde deferred the admission of the condom wrapper pending the submission of the PNP Crime Lab report. It also excluded at least 20 documentary and object evidence that the prosecution had offered, prompting government prosecutors to ask the court to reconsider.

The prosecution presented more than 300 objects and documentary evidence, and 28 witnesses—composed of witnesses, policemen, forensic experts and agents from the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Among those not admitted in court were the NCIS report and the testimony of NCIS Special Agent Michael McCarver, said Olongapo City Chief Prosecutor Emilie Fe de los Santos.

McCarver testified that he had interviewed Pemberton after the Marine was implicated in Laude’s murder. The agent also presented three volumes of the NCIS report detailing its investigation.

The court resolution raised the prosecution’s failure to authenticate some of the evidence.

“These [pieces] of evidence are heavy and vital … . All of the evidence pertaining to … the injuries that Jennifer (Laude) sustained is important to be admitted in court because these showed what she had gone through,” De los Santos said.

Flores would not reveal the first defense witness when the trial resumes on Aug. 10. The other nine witnesses included Pemberton himself, his mother, an American law expert, a military law expert, a psychiatrist, an NCIS agent and a forensic expert.