THE House prosecution panel has asked the Senate impeachment court to allocate 62 trial dates for the presentation of its evidence and witnesses in the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Z. Duterte, compared to the 30 trial dates requested by the defense.
House legal spokesperson and private prosecutor Atty. Benjamin “Jay” Tolosa Jr. said the prosecution’s request is based on the number of witnesses and evidence identified in its pre-trial brief.
“The prosecution asked for 62 trial dates and the defense asked for 30,” Tolosa disclosed during a press briefing at the Senate.
He clarified that the request does not necessarily mean the trial will last 62 days, saying the schedule could be shortened if the impeachment court allows more than one witness to be presented per trial day.
Tolosa noted that the defense listed 97 witnesses in its pre-trial brief, including many witnesses also identified by the prosecution, despite asking for only 30 trial dates.
“So it’s a question of how come they listed 97 witnesses but they only asked for 30 trial dates,” he said.
“Maybe it is an indication that there’s really no intention to produce all of those witnesses, but of course, we don’t want to pre-empt what actions they would want to do,” he said.
According to Tolosa, there are 51 common witnesses between the two sides, composed of 16 named witnesses and 35 unnamed witnesses.
He said some defense witnesses were identified only by office, such as representatives from the Office of the Vice President and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Tolosa also said the defense adopted a substantial portion of the prosecution’s documentary evidence.
“For the exhibits, we have 248 common exhibits, meaning 248 out of the 276 exhibits of the prosecution were basically copied also in their pre-trial brief or listed also as their evidence,” Tolosa said.
Tolosa said the final number of trial dates will be determined by the Senate impeachment court in its pre-trial order.
“We will see in the pre-trial order once it’s issued, the actual number of dates that will be allocated to each party,” Tolosa said.
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