The defense of former President Rodrigo Duterte has asked the International Criminal Court to cut the prosecution’s 62,130-item evidence record to no more than 10,000, saying the 320,000-page file is impossible to review in time for his 30 November trial.

In a motion filed before Trial Chamber III, Defense counsel Peter Haynes, KC, said the prosecution’s disclosure had ballooned 978% from 5,275 items at the confirmation stage, with the full record now containing more than 1,000 audio-visual files.

"The sheer volume of material, disclosed to the Defence three months before the start of trial, undermines Mr Duterte's right to adequate time for the preparation of his defence,” the motion read.

At three minutes per page, the defense estimated that reviewing the documentary evidence once would take about 16,000 person-hours. 

The filing also attacked the quality and organization of the disclosure, saying the material was plagued by wrong metadata, duplicate files, detached pages, illegible documents and untranslated or untranscribed recordings.

About 17,500 items had incorrect document dates, according to the motion. In another example, the same photograph of a tube light appeared 21 times, while thousands of other photographs were duplicates or nearly identical.

The defense also questioned the relevance of large portions of the record. Fewer than 5,000 of the 62,130 items contain the word “Duterte,” fewer than 500 mention the “Davao Death Squad,” and only three contain the phrase “national network,” the motion said.

“There is no discernible link to the defendant or charges,” the defense said, aside from Duterte having been president when the killing occurred.

AI evidence questioned

The defense also challenged the prosecution’s handling of a dataset containing about 44,400 items on drug-related deaths. It said prosecutors supplied a spreadsheet with 52,103 rows, each containing an evidence reference number and an AI-generated summary.

The defense alleged that prosecutors had separated material they considered incriminating but left the remainder for the defense to navigate through the spreadsheet.

The prosecution, however, told the chamber it had not simply “dumped” the material and said it had separated the incriminating evidence from the remaining Rule 77 material.

The defense disputed that approach, saying the prosecution could not classify thousands of items as Rule 77 evidence without first determining their materiality.

It said searches of the AI summaries appeared to uncover potentially exculpatory material, including descriptions praising the “meticulousness and thoroughness” of police investigations into drug deaths.

10,000-item cap sought

As a result, the defense wants the prosecution to create a new case record containing all exculpatory evidence and duly reviewed and triaged Rule 77 and incriminating evidence, capped at 10,000 items. It asked that the new record be completed by 7 October.

The defense said merely cutting the prosecution’s formal list of evidence would not solve the problem because lawyers would still have to review the full 62,130-item record for material that could help Duterte’s case.

It said the normal remedy would be to postpone the trial, but proposed the reduced record instead to preserve the 30 November start date.

“Accepting the status quo would be calamitous. The current case record is too big and too replete with metadata errors for the parties and the Chamber effectively to navigate and manage it,” the motion read.