Monday, August 3, 2015
Bulletin: Joseph Scott Pemburton: Phillipines; Trial resumes with presentation of the defence case; The Inquirer reports that ‘New tests show no evidence linking Pemberton to crime scene’; "American experts, who were presented as prosecution witnesses in June, had testified that a condom wrapper found in a motel room where Laude died on Oct. 11 last year bore Pemberton’s fingerprints. Pemberton’s lawyers had asked the court to allow the PNP Crime Laboratory to re-examine the wrapper. “Based on the result of the PNP test, Pemberton’s fingerprints were not found on the condom wrapper that was re-examined,” said lawyer Rowena Garcia-Flores, one of Pemberton’s counsels. “There’s no longer [any] physical evidence linking Pemberton to the crime scene. The PNP found fingerprints on that condom wrapper but those were not from Pemberton.” Trial resumes August 10.
"A lawyer of United States Marine
Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton on Monday said the
prosecution’s evidence tying the soldier to the murder of transgender
Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude had been debunked by forensic experts of the
Philippine National Police. American experts, who were presented as prosecution witnesses in
June, had testified that a condom wrapper found in a motel room where
Laude died on Oct. 11 last year bore Pemberton’s fingerprints. Pemberton’s
lawyers had asked the court to allow the PNP Crime Laboratory to
re-examine the wrapper. “Based on the result of the PNP test,
Pemberton’s fingerprints were
not found on the condom wrapper that was re-examined,” said lawyer
Rowena Garcia-Flores, one of Pemberton’s counsels. “There’s no longer
[any] physical evidence linking Pemberton to the
crime scene. The PNP found fingerprints on that condom wrapper but those
were not from Pemberton,” Flores told reporters here on Monday. Laude
was found dead in a bathroom of a motel in this city, after her
companion, a foreigner whom witnesses identified as Pemberton, left
their room on the night of Oct. 11, 2014.........The prosecution
presented more than 300 objects and documentary
evidence, and 28 witnesses -— composed of eyewitnesses, policemen,
forensic experts and agents from the US Naval Criminal Investigative
Service (NCIS). However, among the pieces of evidence that were not
admitted in court
were a report from the NCIS and the testimony of NCIS Special Agent
Michael McCarver, said Olongapo City Chief Prosecutor Emilie Fe de los
Santos. McCarver testified that he interviewed Pemberton after the
Marine was
implicated in Laude’s murder. McCarver also presented to the court
three volumes of the NCIS report detailing its investigation. The court
resolution also 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… injuries that Jennifer (Laude) sustained are important to
be admitted in court because these showed what she had gone through,”
De los Santos said. When asked, Flores said she could not reveal their first witness when the trial resumes on Aug. 10. But the defense had listed 10 witnesses, among them, Pemberton
himself, his mother, an American law expert, a military law expert, a
psychiatrist, an NCIS agent and a forensic expert."
