The legal defense team representing former President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to revise its E-Court Protocol to enforce rigorous verification standards for open-source and user-generated materials submitted as trial evidence.
In a official submission to ICC Trial Chamber III, the defense raised major concerns regarding the evidence submitted by the prosecution, pointing to unreadable documents, audio-visual files provided without transcripts or translations, and separated pages of single documents disclosed under distinct, non-sequential reference numbers.
”Based on a small sample of documents from the same dataset which has already been received by the defense, it is clear that there are major issues with this collection of documents; it includes many duplicates and documents of very poor quality which, notwithstanding its volume, makes meaningful review immensely challenging,” the defense said.
The defense highlighted that the prosecution’s evidentiary filings have expanded significantly, growing from roughly 5,000 items prior to the February confirmation hearing to over 25,000 pieces of evidence in the latest count, with an additional 200 gigabytes of data pending submission.
”With three months until the start of trial, the defense is deeply concerned that the quality and quantity of the evidence in this case risks flooding the record with unreliable and/or irrelevant material. This would be detrimental for the parties and the Chamber’s search for the truth, and reputationally damaging for the Court,” the defense said.
”This concern is particularly heightened in this case where, unlike in other cases previously before the Court, the parties and Chamber are operating in an environment where a huge volume of misinformation is being routinely created and shared online about these proceedings and the events on which they focus.”
Proposed Verification Framework
To mitigate these risks, the defense requested the inclusion of an “Expert Verification” metadata field within the E-Court Protocol for all crowdsourced and open-source materials. This addition would require parties to state whether an submitted item is accompanied by a formal technical report.
”In the defense’s view, any such expert report ought to include, at a minimum, information on: the source of the item (both the sender/uploader and the creator of the piece of evidence, if known); its chain of custody and whether the item is the original or a copy; its metadata and any other technical aspects, such as the hash value generated at the time of capture; the steps taken to verify the material and to check for editing or manipulation,” the defense said.
”It should also include information on the qualifications and experience of the person who undertook those steps to verify the material on behalf of the tendering party, and the methodology that they followed. Without this information, it would be very difficult for the Chamber to come to a view on the evidence’s relevance and admissibility, pursuant to Article 69(4) of the Statute,” it added.
The defense further advised that the court adopt a standardized verification template for expert reports prior to the opening of proceedings.
Duterte has remained in ICC custody since March 2025 to face charges of crimes against humanity connected to anti-drug operations and extrajudicial killings during his tenure as Davao City mayor and his presidency from 2016 to 2022.
The formal trial phase is scheduled to begin on November 30.