Prosecution urges ICC to reject defense motion to cap evidence
MANILA — Prosecutors in the crimes against humanity case against former President Rodrigo Duterte have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to reject a defense motion seeking to limit the prosecution’s disclosed evidence to 10,000 items.
In a response filed confidentially on September 29 and made public in redacted form on October 5, the prosecution argued that the volume of evidence is reasonable and relevant to proving specific charged incidents and the broader context of the alleged crimes.
“It is voluminous because it records the deaths of the thousands of individuals killed by the PNP in anti-illegal drug operations and the deaths of drug personalities while Mr Duterte was President,” the prosecution said in the filing, signed by Acting Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang.
The prosecution also rejected the defense’s characterization of its disclosure as a “dumping of documents.”
“The Prosecution rejects the repeated portrayal of the disclosure of documents that memorialise the attack against the civilian population, including victims specified in this case, as the ‘dumping of documents’ into the case record. The Prosecution has made every effort to assist the Defence in its review of this dataset but its proposals have been largely rejected.”
Prosecutors argued that imposing an arbitrary cap would violate their disclosure obligations by requiring them to withhold evidence they consider material to the defense’s trial preparations.
In its motion, filed confidentially on September 22 and made public in redacted form on September 25, Duterte’s defense said the prosecution’s disclosure had expanded from 5,275 items during the confirmation phase to 62,130 items.
The defense cited 19,238 items on the prosecution’s List of Evidence. The prosecution’s response gave slightly different figures: 62,034 disclosed items, including 19,241 on its List of Evidence.
The defense argued that it could not review the extensive collection before trial, saying the disclosed material included more than 320,000 pages of documents and 1,000 audio-visual items.
Aside from describing the case record as “unworkable,” the defense challenged the quality of the material, calling it “abysmal.”
It cited allegedly incorrect document descriptions and dates, detached pages, illegible records, duplicates, and missing translations or transcripts.
“In ordinary circumstances, the obvious remedy would be to vacate the start date of trial to allow the Defence adequate time to review the full record of disclosure and prepare for trial,” the motion stated.
Instead, the defense proposed creating a new, reduced case record to allow the November 30 trial date to be maintained.
The motion, signed by defense counsel Peter Haynes, asked Trial Chamber III to order the prosecution to coordinate with the Registry and transfer all exculpatory evidence, along with reviewed and prioritized material relevant to defence preparation and incriminating evidence, into a new case record containing no more than 10,000 items by October 7.
The prosecution countered that the proposal would require the removal of a dataset it considers highly relevant to proving the alleged widespread and systematic attack against civilians.
It argued that withholding material evidence from the defense, or removing records supporting the broader context of its case, would more severely hinder the court’s search for the truth.
Prosecutors also said the defense rejected six proposed agreed facts that would have allowed approximately 42,511 items to be removed from the case record.
They cited efforts to help Duterte’s lawyers navigate the documents, including sharing an internal index developed through the individual examination of each document.
The prosecution acknowledged legitimate disclosure issues and said it was taking steps to address them, but maintained that the defense must undertake its own review of the material.
“It is the role of the Defence – not the Prosecution – to review the evidence disclosed to it in order to prepare for trial. The Defence has repeatedly demonstrated its reluctance to begin this work in earnest despite significant assistance from the Prosecution that goes well beyond the scope of its obligations. It has instead spent its time collating complaints, that when placed in their proper context, are of limited impact,” the prosecution said.
Duterte has been in ICC custody in The Hague, the Netherlands, since March 2025. He made his first in-person appearance before the court on September 16, 2026, during Trial Chamber III’s third status conference.
His trial is scheduled to begin on November 30.