Duterte team hits Prosecution's disclosure; prosec says defense is exaggerating

Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s defense team on Wednesday slammed the Prosecution’s disclosure of its evidence in the former official’s crimes against humanity case, saying that it is in a “terrible mess.”

During the third status conference before the International Criminal Court (ICC) Trial Chamber III, Duterte’s counsel, Peter Haynes, said that there are around 62,000 exhibits “dumped” in the Registry.

“Mr. Nicholls, I think unintentionally, has kind of muddied the waters here. Because the large disclosure package he referred to is not within that 19,000… nearly 20,000. That’s additional to that,” he said.

“And what has been dumped in the Registry is 62,500 exhibits. That 324,000 pages of evidence and over 1,000 video and audio files which run to many thousands of hours. And they’re in a terrible mess,” he added.

Haynes said evidence has been in the possession of the Prosecution since November 2021.

“That’s nearly five years. And the first time we knew about the large tranche was the 15th of July, six weeks before the end of disclosure,” he said.

According to Haynes, they looked into the possibility of acquiring an AI tool to review the documents.

However, he said it would cost nearly €500,000.

Haynes also argued that it was not their job to inspect the material.

“They’re supposed to triage this material and disclose it having read it. They’ve never read it. And they’ve had it for five years,” he said.

“As I say, I’m not going to go into the correspondence, but I have in front of me an email where we say, explicitly, we are not going to assume responsibility for inspecting and assessing the relevance of the documents in your possession,” he added.

Meanwhile, Haynes informed the Court that some documents were disclosed page by page.

He said a partial solution is a “meta data update,” but added that this only establishes the connection point between the pages.

“It doesn’t put them together in one document. There are still 400 separate exhibits,” he said.

Exaggeration

For his part, Prosecutor and Senior Trial Lawyer Julian Nicholls said that what Haynes said was not entirely accurate and was “really exaggerated, in [his] view.”

“Yes, there may be some duplicates… I’m not saying it’s perfect, but that was not an accurate picture.

In response, Presiding Judge Joanna Korner said that the example presented by Haynes did not “inspire them with much confidence.”

Earlier, Nicholls also said that he and the defense have yet to agree on facts.

“So far, the agreement on agreed facts has been exactly zero. At this moment, we have to prove that he was mayor of Davao. At this moment, we have to prove he was elected president and that he served as president,” he said.

Korner told the Prosecution to produce a list of key items of evidence.

Meanwhile, she directed the defense to submit into writing its complaints or suggestions within seven days.

She also gave the Prosecution seven days to give its reply.

Korner also advised the parties to discuss with each other.

Duterte, who is is facing charges over alleged killings during his time as President and Davao City mayor, attended his status conference for the first time.

He sat behind his defense team.

In the few moments that the former official was shown in the livestream, he appeared to be listening intently. — RSJ, GMA News