A protester holds a life-size cartboard cutouts of former Philippines' president Rodrigo Duterte during a demonstration in his support outside the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on February 23, 2026. Simon Wohlfahrt, AFP/File
MANILA — The list of evidence in the trial of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte became a topic of a lengthy discussion during the third status conference for his crimes against humanities case at the International Criminal Court on Wednesday.
Presiding Judge Joanna Korner first raised the issue about more than 15,000 items for exhibits.
She reiterated that the Chamber wants to avoid the wholesale dumping of exhibits, evidence and videos that are repetitive or have limited relevance.
Senior trial lawyer Julian Nicholls explained that a big part of that number involves a large data set that they did not disclose publicly but in a private session.
He did say later that the data set involves information from the Philippine National Police on the total of deaths in the Duterte administration’s anti-drug campaign.
Rodrigo Duterte makes first in-person appearance at ICC
“This data set provides a kind of bottom number of what the government, and the Philippines’ national police say, are war on drugs numbers, where a suspect was killed in a police operation, and that comes around 3,420 deaths that they said occured in that period nationwide,” he explained.
“The data set was truly enormous and when it came, it was in an absolute mess when we received it,” he also said, adding that their team spent hours organizing the data set.
Nicholls also said they were not dumping it in court but they are trying to fix the information they have for the trial and they will still try to streamline and cut it even more.
“We may have gotten broad. We’ll try to narrow it down,” he said.
The Chamber then requested a list of key items to be presented.
“[I]f a number of them say the same thing, we would expect you to select the best, the Defense will obviously have access to all these documents,” Korner said.
She said the prosecution will not have to include "every single document", just “those that are most capable of proving what you wish to establish.”
The list is to be submitted at least seven days ahead of the next status conference.
The defense, led by Peter Haynes, decried the tons of evidence they had to go through. He said the more than 15,000 exhibits that were mentioned were just non-witness exhibits. There are still more than 3,000 witness items.
“So not withstanding your imploring them to be focused and economical in May, the list of exhibits has quadrupled,” he said.
Haynes said the prosecution had exhibits since November 2021 and the defense was only told about them in July.
They also complained about missing pages, multiple disclosures of the same document and misidentification
A solution he proposed was to direct opening of a new case file with a new exhibit list.
“I would invite you to consider migrating a smaller case to a new case file, and perhaps limiting the overall disclosure therein to about 10,000 documents,” he also said.
According to Haynes, he could have asked the Chamber to push back the trial for another six months if only he had a younger and healthier client.
“It’s the only solution we can suggest given the state of the case, which is a mess," he said.
Korner gave the defense seven days to file a motion but said she believes this has to be resolved quickly and without the court’s intervention as much as possible.
“If you could put down what your complaints are, and any suggestions…if you could do that. And Mr. Nicholls, if you could respond,” she said.
“But I would encourage, however, the parties to again get together about this. If it can be resolved amicably without involving the chamber then that would be very helpful,” Korner added.
Wednesday's hearing was a "status hearing" for the parties and the judge to fix logistical details.
It also marked Duterte’s first in person appearance at the ICC in a year since his arrest.
Duterte faces three counts of crimes against humanity, with prosecutors alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders between 2013 and 2018 during his offensive against drug users and sellers.
READ: Rodrigo Duterte makes first in-person appearance at ICC