EDITORIAL - Freeing Pemberton

With President Duterte himself saying the US serviceman has been treated “unfairly,” authorities are now speeding up the processing of the release of US Marine Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton from a special prison facility at Camp Aguinaldo.

Pemberton spent about six years in prison for killing Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude after discovering during their encounter in Olongapo City that he was having sex not with a woman but with a transgender. Late last month, Pemberton paid the Laude family P4.655 million in civil damages.

Last week, Olongapo Regional Trial Court Branch 74 Judge Roline Ginez Jabalde ordered Pemberton’s release, crediting him with good conduct time allowance. Pemberton had served about five years and eight months in prison. Jabalde credited to GCTA the remaining 1,548 days in his maximum sentence of 10 years. Amid the consequent uproar, the President announced on Monday night that in the interest of fairness, he had granted Pemberton absolute pardon.

The pardon, however, should not stop authorities from clarifying whether the courts can approve on their own the grant of GCTA to convicts. Pemberton has been held in a special prison facility operated by the Bureau of Corrections. The BuCor is supposed to be the agency that monitors the behavior of a prisoner and therefore can determine if the inmate deserves GCTA credits, which can reduce the time served in the sentence.

Also allowed by law to grant GCTA are the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology as well as the wardens of provincial, district, municipal and city jails. Nowhere does the law say that a trial court judge can grant GCTA. Before the presidential pardon, the Laude camp had accused Judge Jabalde of “judicial overreach.”

Before the COVID pandemic, the application of the GCTA had been controversial enough, after it was used in the case of rape-murder convict Antonio Sanchez following a Supreme Court ruling on the retroactive application of the privilege. The Senate has yet to formally wrap up its investigation into the controversy. The issue needs clarification before other judges issue similar release orders based on their own GCTA computations.