The legal team of former President Rodrigo Duterte has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to limit the prosecution’s evidence to 10,000 items, saying the volume of material disclosed ahead of his trial is "unworkable."
In a filing before the ICC, Duterte’s defense team, led by Peter Haynes, said the prosecution had disclosed 62,130 items of evidence, a significant increase from the 5,275 items presented during the confirmation phase.
“The Prosecution disclosed 5,275 items of evidence in the confirmation phase. Having heard the Trial Chamber’s request for a tight case record, it then chose to expand this to 62,130 items at the time of writing,” the defense said.
The defense said the prosecution’s current list of evidence comprises 19,238 of the 62,130 disclosed items.
It argued that the volume of evidence, which includes more than 320,000 pages of documents and over 1,000 audio-visual items, would prevent the defense from adequately preparing for trial.
“The Defence has no ability to read this volume of evidence prior to trial,” it said, adding that an initial review showed that much of the material had limited or no relevance to the charges.
The defense also questioned the quality of some of the disclosed files, citing incorrect dates, AI-generated summaries and duplicate documents.
It said the disclosure of the evidence just three months before the scheduled start of trial undermined Duterte’s right to adequate time to prepare his defense under Article 67(1)(b) of the Rome Statute.
According to the defense, reviewing all the documentary evidence even once would require an estimated 16,000 person-hours, based on a conservative estimate of three minutes per page.
The legal team called on the prosecution to exclude unverified, duplicative, illegible, repetitive and irrelevant materials from the case file and reduce the evidence to 10,000 items.
“Accepting the status quo would be calamitous,” the defense said, calling for a reset of the case file before trial.
Duterte is facing charges of crimes against humanity before the ICC in connection with killings allegedly committed during his anti-drug campaign when he was mayor of Davao City and later president of the Philippines.
ICC Trial Chamber III is expected to rule on the defense motion in the coming days. Duterte’s trial is scheduled to begin on November 30.
