THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Trial Chamber III of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has turned down a request from former President Rodrigo Duterte’s legal team to add an “expert verification” step to trial evidence, cautioning that the requirement would cause “needless delay” to the start of proceedings.
The Chamber rendered its seven-page ruling on September 28, clarifying that the defense’s proposed revision to the E-Court Protocol was not a simple addition to system metadata.
Instead, the modification aimed to mandate that “expert verification reports always accompany open source and user-generated evidence submitted to the Chamber in the present case.”
”Given the large volume of evidence that has been made available by the Prosecution in the present case, as well as the breadth of open source and user-generated evidence, if implemented, may in the event be unnecessary and could well have the effect of causing a needless delay to the start of the trial,” the Chamber stated.
Duterte’s defense team originally submitted the request in August, seeking to modify NUIX—the software solution utilized by the ICC for Judicial Evidence Management (JEM). The defense sought to incorporate an “expert verification” metadata field to confirm whether submitted open-source or user-generated materials had accompanying expert reports.
The request stemmed from defense concerns regarding the extensive scale of prosecution evidence, which counsel argued contained “many duplicates and documents of very poor quality which, notwithstanding its volume, makes meaningful review immensely challenging” and “risks flooding the record with unreliable and/or irrelevant material.”
The defense maintained that expert verification served as “the first step to ensuring that only properly verified open-source material is submitted.”
However, the Chamber noted that concerns regarding evidence volume had already been addressed through orders issued during the third Status Conference.
”The purpose of the Defence’s Request will therefore be addressed through these alternative measures,” the decision stated.
The judges further explained that adopting the defense’s proposal would force the prosecution to compile additional documentation regarding evidence relevance and admissibility prior to defense analysis.
The Chamber ruled that this setup contradicts the Directions of the Conduct of Proceedings, which mandate that parties “raise issues as to admissibility of evidence, including on any of the standard evidentiary criteria, at the time when the evidence is submitted to the Chamber or immediately after such an issue becomes known.”
While denying the defense request, the Chamber approved a prosecution motion to amend the E-Court Protocol by introducing a URL metadata field. The field will enable judges and trial participants to “easily identify the URL associated with the open-source evidence at the time it was captured.”
Noting that the defense, the Common Legal Representative of the Victims, and the Registry raised no objections to the prosecution’s request, the court ruled:
”Under these circumstances, the Chamber is satisfied that it is appropriate to grant the Request and decides to amend the E-Court Protocol as requested.”
The Registry was instructed to file the updated E-Court Protocol by October 2.