Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte appears at the International Criminal Court during the third status conference in the case of The Prosecutor v. Rodrigo Roa Duterte, September 16, 2026. Handout/ICC via Flickr
MANILA — Defense lawyers for former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to drastically cut down the Prosecution's evidence record, warning that a massive dump of flawed and irrelevant files threatens his right to a fair trial.
In a filing submitted on September 25, 2026, lead defense counsel Peter Haynes, KC, revealed that Prosecution evidence ballooned by 978%—jumping from 5,275 items to 62,130 files (over 320,000 pages).
Reviewing the documents before the November 30 trial date would take an estimated 16,000 hours, which the defense team called humanly impossible.
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"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..." Haynes wrote, calling the timeline particularly harsh for the "frail and elderly defendant."
The defense described the quality of the materials as "abysmal," listing several key issues:
Dubious Relevance: Out of 62,130 items, fewer than 5,000 mention the name "Duterte" even once. The term "Davao Death Squad" appears in fewer than 0.8% of the records, while key prosecution terms like "national network" appear in only three files—two of which are duplicate news articles.
Irrelevant Case Files: Thousands of pages detail police investigations into deaths with no connection to the 49 charged incidents. One cited example was a police report on a murder resulting from a street gambling dispute over a coin toss (cara y cruz).
Systemic Metadata Errors: Over 17,500 items contain incorrect dates—including transcripts of Duterte's speeches improperly dated in late 2026. Around 34,000 items from a single dataset were misclassified as "Personal Data" despite containing crime scene sketches, arrest warrants, and autopsy reports.
Unusable Formats: The record is filled with "floating" orphan pages detached from their master documents, unreadable scans, missing Cebuano and Tagalog translations, and duplicate files—including 21 identical pictures of a tube light.
Families of victims of the war on drugs under former President Rodrigo Duterte, along with human rights advocates, gather at the National Council of Churches in the Philippines in Quezon City on September 16, 2026, to watch the livestream of the International Criminal Court’s third status conference. Jire Carreon, ABS-CBN News
The motion took aim at the Prosecution's handling of a massive 44,400-item dataset containing information on over 20,000 drug-related deaths. The defense alleged that the Office of the Prosecutor failed to read these files properly before uploading them to the system, instead relying on automated AI-generated summaries to navigate the material.
"To disclose thousands of documents without first even reading them is inconsistent with the Prosecutor's duty..." the defense asserted.
To avoid delaying the November 30 trial, the defense proposed creating a fresh case file capped at a maximum of 10,000 properly reviewed items. Under this proposal, the Prosecution would be forced to properly triage its evidence, migrating only verified, relevant, and non-duplicative materials alongside all exculpatory evidence by October 7, 2026.
"Accepting the status quo would be calamitous," the defense warned. "The only way to reduce the size of this case is to reset disclosure."
Trial Chamber III, presided over by Judge Joanna Korner alongside Judge Keebong Paek and Judge Nicolas Guillou, is expected to rule on the motion in the coming days.
Duterte, 81, made his first in-person appearance at the ICC last September 16, where he is facing charges over the war on drugs during his administration.
During hearings in February, the prosecution alleged Duterte killed thousands of suspected drug dealers and users, first as mayor of Davao City, then as president.
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