DU30 counsel warns vs evidence overload

The defense team 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 percent 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 Defense three months before the start of trial, undermines Mr. Duterte’s right to adequate time for the preparation of his defense,” 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 wrong metadata, duplicate files, detached pages, illegible documents and untranslated or untranscribed recordings plagued the material.

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.

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.