Issue over evidence limit lingers as Du30 trial nears
A little over a month before the trial of former President Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity begins at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the opposing parties have yet to agree on the volume of the evidence that the prosecution can present.
In the fourth status conference on Tuesday, which continued the discussions in preparation for trial, the defense remained dissatisfied by the prosecution’s proposal on how to cut its evidence down to a manageable list of items.
Duterte, who is detained in an ICC facility, again appeared in court after being declared mentally and physically fit to participate. It was his second in-person attendance in court since the ICC took the 81-year-old under its custody in March 2025.
Peter Haynes, Duterte’s lead defense counsel, has been asking the Trial Chamber (TC) III to order the prosecution to significantly reduce its evidence to just 10,000 items from a high of around 62,000.
To address this, Julian Nicholls, senior trial lawyer of the prosecution, said the total case file could be trimmed down to 42,511 documents “if we are able to reach an agreement.”
Nicholls noted that the list of evidence considered “nonnegotiable” to the case could be reduced to 6,863 items.
Part of the proposed evidence list are official records from the Philippine National Police that showed 3,422 killings from antidrug operations from July 2016 to November 2017.
“This shouldn’t be difficult to come to an agreement on. And obviously, we can’t go through every page in court and count that up. But the number that comes out of this data set … It’s more conservative than what the [Duterte] administration reported,” Nicholls told the TC III.
“It corroborates this report and it corroborates the witness testimony and other evidence about the scale of the killings by police, whether or not they’re unlawful during that critical time period, beginning immediately after he becomes president,” he added.
The prosecution questioned the defense for continuing to reject its evidence disclosure as well as its “multiple offers” to help in processing and studying the thousands of files. Nicholls stressed that a spreadsheet the prosecution turned over to the defense has been made searchable, hyperlinked and filterable.
“I understand your honors feel there is too much on the list of evidence—this takes care of all of it, and it’s not complicated. There are some documents that we won’t just stipulate away simply because they’re directly relevant to our incidents or used by our experts,” he added.
Presiding Judge Joanna Korner asked the defense why it has turned down the supposed offer to resolve the issue.
“[We’ve] spent virtually every day since August 31st sorting out the problems with disclosure … This is just part of a wider problem in this case, that this material literally has been dumped on us,” Haynes told Korner.
The prosecution also informed the chamber that five witnesses would be presented, at least in the first two months of the trial. They were identified as witnesses P-1100, P-1400, P-1263, P-1302 and P-0009.
Latest filing
Meanwhile, the prosecution asked the TC III to allow it to admit three more individuals as witnesses in the case against Duterte for supposedly having knowledge of alleged drug war killings by police officers in Bulacan province.
In its 14-page page filing dated Oct. 7 but released only early Tuesday, the prosecution identified P-1370, P-1393 and P-1416, as potential witnesses that had prior recorded testimonies pertaining to alleged extrajudicial killings in Central Luzon region.
Particularly, it noted, the testimonies of the three possible witnesses are “relevant to murders, including under count 3” allegedly committed by PNP officers in the city of San Jose del Monte and in another undisclosed location.
Count 3 refers to the killings that were committed under Duterte’s antinarcotics policy at the national level, more known as “Project: Double Barrel.” This was implemented by then PNP chief and now Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, who remains in hiding amid a standing arrest warrant from the ICC. —WITH A REPORT FROM ZACARIAN SARAO
