Lawyers for former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to allow them to file a response of up to 10 pages to prosecution arguments over the disclosure of evidence in his case.
In a 7-page request to Trial Chamber III, the defense said prosecutors had raised new issues concerning the handling and relevance of a dataset containing about 32,000 documents that the defense said it could not reasonably have anticipated.
The defense argued that prosecutors should not shift the burden of reviewing the documents to the defense by providing artificial intelligence-generated summaries and a spreadsheet, particularly when relevant context surrounding exchanges between the parties was missing.
“There is an obvious divergence between the parties as to the Prosecution’s obligations to review, triage, and disclose the [REDACTED] dataset, and the diligence with which this has been done,” the defense said in its filing.
The defense maintained that prosecutors were required to review the entire dataset and identify both incriminating and exonerating material, rather than select only the items they considered most relevant.
It argued that providing a spreadsheet to help the defense navigate thousands of documents using AI-generated summaries was no substitute for a full review by prosecutors.
The defense also challenged the prosecution’s position that the entire dataset should remain in the evidentiary record because of its relevance to the case and the steps taken to facilitate the defense’s review.
According to the filing, prosecutors initially offered on July 15, 2026, to provide the dataset through a separate platform with analytical capabilities. The defense said it accepted the offer on July 17, but prosecutors later withdrew it and proposed uploading all 32,000 items to the standard DefenceJEM platform, accompanied by an Excel spreadsheet.
Under that proposal, the defense said it would have to assess the relevance of each item itself and inform prosecutors which documents should be disclosed.
The defense also said it had waited three weeks, from July 24 to Aug. 14, 2026, for a response from prosecutors on disclosure issues, while case deadlines continued to run.
It argued that the prosecution had presented an incomplete account of the exchanges between the parties and that a limited response would provide the chamber with the missing context needed to resolve the dispute.
The defense asked the judges to authorize a reply of no more than 10 pages, to be filed within three days of any order granting permission.
