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DPA
MANILA
THE PHILIPPINES' Court of Appeals has rejected a plea by a US Marine seeking to overturn a 10-year jail sentence for the killing of a transgender person in 2014, according to court records released~on Monday.
The court's 12-page ruling also sustained its order directing US Marine Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton to indemnify the family of his victim - Jeffrey"Jennifer"Laude - with the sum of 4.32 million pesos (84,210 dollars).
The court said Pemberton, who is being held at a special facility inside the armed forces headquarters in suburban Quezon City, did not raise new arguments to support his petition.
"We maintain our ruling that his invocation of self defence is an admission of the killing and of its authorship,"the court said in its decision dated August 15.
"The bits of evidence pieced together point to Pemberton as the killer of Laude,"it added.
A local court found Pemberton guilty in 2015 of murdering Laude. The Court of Appeals upheld the conviction on~April 3.
It noted that Pemberton killed Laude in October 2014 inside a motel in Subic, 86 kilometres north-west of Manila, for the"puerile reason"that the victim"pretended to be a woman."
