MANILA, Philippines — Reviewing the documentary evidence disclosed by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors in the case against former president Rodrigo Duterte would require about 16,000 person-hours even if each document were examined only once, his defense team said.
In a motion filed before ICC Trial Chamber III on Sept. 25 and signed by lead counsel Peter Haynes, Duterte's lawyers said the prosecution had disclosed 62,130 items of evidence, consisting of more than 320,000 pages of documents and about 1,000 audio-visual materials.
The defense estimated that reviewing the documentary evidence at a conservative rate of three minutes per page would take about 16,000 person-hours.
The lawyers said the volume of evidence had made it impossible for the defense to review the entire disclosure before Duterte's trial, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 30.
They said the prosecution initially disclosed 5,275 items during the confirmation phase but expanded the record to 62,130 items by the time of the filing, up by 978 percent.
The defense argued that the massive disclosure, much of it made only months before trial, undermined Duterte's right to adequate time to prepare his defense.
It said about 57,000 items were disclosed after June 8, with more than 37,000 of them disclosed on or after Aug. 31.
The defense also questioned the relevance and quality of portions of the evidence.
It said fewer than 5,000 of the 62,130 items contain the word "Duterte," while the term "national network," which it said is central to the prosecution's case theory concerning two counts, appears in only three items.
The term "Davao Death Squad," meanwhile, appears in fewer than 500 items, according to the defense.
The lawyers said the disclosure also contained what they described as systemic problems, including incorrect document descriptions, dates and other metadata; pages detached from the documents to which they belonged; duplicate and repetitive material; illegible or blank files; and untranslated or untranscribed audio and video.
They said at least 34,000 items from one dataset had been incorrectly classified as personal even though they consisted of police reports, crime-scene photographs and sketches, death certificates, arrest warrants and other materials.
The defense also identified about 17,500 items that it said had been given incorrect document dates as well as "floating" documents and annexes that were not properly linked to the documents to which they belonged.
The defense also challenged the prosecution's disclosure of a large dataset involving more than 20,000 drug-related deaths in the Philippines between 2016 and 2017.
They argued that the prosecution had not adequately reviewed and triaged the evidence and asked the chamber to exclude the large dataset and other material they considered unverified, duplicative, illegible, repetitive or irrelevant.
Instead of seeking to postpone the Nov. 30 trial outright, the defense proposed that the prosecution create a new, reduced case record containing exculpatory evidence as well as properly reviewed and relevant Rule 77 and incriminating evidence.
It asked the chamber to cap the new record at 10,000 items and direct the prosecution to complete it by Oct. 7.
