DPA/Manila

The murder trial of a US Marine accused of killing a transgender Filipino began yesterday amid reports the victim’s family rejected an alleged plea bargain deal, lawyers said.
The family of victim Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude said the camp of Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton offered to pay 21mn pesos ($477,000) if they agreed to a lesser crime of homicide.
But the family rejected the offer, according to their private lawyer Harry Roque.
“We want to see Pemberton’s conviction where he will be sentenced to a lifetime imprisonment rather than 12 years or 20 years in prison with the possibility of a release and a possibility that it will be spent in the US,” he said.
Public state prosecutor Emilie delos Santos said a bellboy who saw Pemberton and Laude together in a motel in Olongapo City, 90 kilometres north of Manila, was the first witness in the trial, which was closed to the media. The bellboy was also the person who discovered the body of Laude, who was strangled, in the bathroom of the motel room after Pemberton hurriedly left in October. A lawyer for the US Marine denied the defence offered a plea bargain.
“That is a lie,” said Attorney Benjamin Tolosa Jr. “It was the prosecution that demanded the plea bargain.” The victim’s family asked the Department of Justice to assign a different prosecutor to the case. They alleged that delos Santos was not co-operating with their private lawyer who was not allowed to attend a meeting when the alleged plea bargain was discussed.



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