Justice Lateefat Okunnu of the Ikeja High Court, on Friday,
convicted Akolade Arowolo who murdered his wife, Titilayo, at their Isolo
residence in 2011.
In sentencing Mr. Arowolo to death, the judge said that the
prosecution proved their case beyond reasonable doubt and established that the
defendant was responsible for his wife’s death.
Mrs. Okunnu said that she reached her verdict by relying on
the evidences of the pathologist who conducted a post-mortem examination on the
deceased’s corpse, the parents of the convict who were “not witnesses of
truth”, and the contradictory statements of the convict.
She also relied on the “Doctrine of the Last Scene” which
stipulates that the last person at a crime scene bears full responsibility for
the deceased.
“It serves to buttress the finding that the defendant and no
one else is the culprit,” Mrs. Okunnu added.
As the judge pronounced her sentence, Mr. Arowolo fell in
the dock and burst into tears, screaming “who would take care of my little
daughter?”
The trial of Mr. Arowolo, 32, began in 2011 after the
prosecution accused him of stabbing to death his wife, a banker, on June 24,
2011 at their residence at 8, Akindeinde St., Isolo, Lagos.
The defendant, however, had insisted that his wife inflicted
the grievous body harm on herself.
When he walked into the courtroom at 9.32 a.m., Mr. Arowolo,
sporting a crisp white shirt on black pants, marched straight to a vacant seat,
knelt before it and delved into a brief prayer session.
Then he sat down and opened a bible he was clutching.
When the judge began to read her judgment 20 minutes later,
Mr. Arowolo, seated in the dock with his face in his hands, periodically shook
his head.
At the end of the three hour judgment, after the judge’s
death sentence, he screamed “Jesus, my Lord,” launched into a worship song,
followed by a blurt of incoherent speech.
Prosecution’s witnesses
Friday’s judgment lasted three hours as the judge traced the
origin of the trial, the evidences of all the witnesses, as well as scores of
crime exhibits.
15 prosecution witnesses appeared during the trial,
including the deceased person’s father, sisters, and step mother. The couple’s
neighbour, security guard, and landlord also testified for the prosecution.
In his testimony at the beginning of the trial three years
ago, George Oyakhire, the deceased’s father stated that Titilayo sounded
“panicky on the phone” when he spoke with her on the morning of the incident.
He said he subsequently reached out to his daughters to call
her and find out the problem.
Mr. Oyakhire also said that his daughter did not always live
with her husband because he always beat her – one day he had threatened to
throw her down from the top floor of their one storey apartment.
“His (Akolade) father even warned that he is capable of such
evil,” Mr. Oyakhire added.
“When I told Titilayo to report her husband to a police
station, she said ‘God will take control and touch his heart.”
The prosecution witnesses who forced the door of the
couple’s apartment open, the day after the incident and after repeated calls to
both of them were unsuccessful, said that Titilayo’s lifeless, bloodied body
was found on the bed with the bedroom turned upside down.
“There was a knife on the floor, a gaping hole on her chest,
a hammer on the floor. One of her eyes was gorged out. When I saw it, I thought
there was nothing in the socket,” Bisi, the deceased’s stepmother, had said
during her testimony.
“Something that looked like a lump of flesh that must have
been chopped off from the deceased was lying on the floor,” she added.
Police witnesses also narrated details of the bloodied crime
scene and how the corpse was taken to the hospital.
But it was the “expert” witness of John Obafunwa, a Forensic
Pathologist and Chief Medical Examiner at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital,
that provided ample evidence that the prosecution used to nail Mr. Arowolo.
The judge, while reading out her judgment on Friday,
described Mr. Obafunwa’s evidence as “completely professional,” noting that he
was “objective, formal, and impassioned.”
After he conducted a five and a half hour post mortem
examination on the corpse on July 6,
2011, Mr. Obafunwa said, during his testimony, that he discovered at least 76
stab wounds resulting from the use of “tremendous force” on the chest, heart,
lungs, liver, diaphragm, hands, and other parts of the deceased’s body.
“You can actually see through to the inside of the chest
wall which had collapsed. A particular stab went through the rib cavity to the
heart, the stomach was completely torn open.
“All these injuries could not have been self-inflicted
because at a point, you would have dropped the knife,” said Mr. Obafunwa, a
professor of Forensic Pathology.
‘Contradictory’ defense
The defence produced six witnesses which included the
defendant, his parents, and one Efe Alexandra, who works with a
non-governmental organization that visits the prison.
Mudashiru Arowolo, the convict’s father, said that his son’s
marriage to Titilayo had been characterized by undue interference by her father
and stepmother.
Mudashiru accused the deceased’s stepmother of attempting to
take away the placenta of the couple’s new baby as well as introducing fetish
things into their home.
He also accused the stepmother of assisting the deceased to
“abort a baby and tie her womb as a form of family planning” without informing
his son.
He further said that his son had been a youth pastor at the
Foursquare Gospel Church in Festac Town before they moved to Isolo and he
started attending The Redeemed Church at Gbagada.
He also denied claims that his son was suspended by the
church for womanizing and wife-snatching.
“The defendant (his son) had over 21 wounds and the deceased
had three. I was shocked to read that she had 76 wounds. It must be the
doctor’s imagination,” Mudashiru added.
During her testimony, the second defence witness, Bolanle
Arowolo, had described her son as a well-behaved child who had never showed
traits of violence.
In addition to describing the defendant’s parents as not
being “witnesses of truth,” the judge also said they were diversionary,
covering up for their son and refusing to answer deep questions during their
cross examination.
The defendant’s own testimony served to tighten the noose
around his neck as it was riddled with contradictions, disjointed statements,
and “faux pas”, according to the judge.
In his statements to the police after he submitted himself
for arrest, Mr. Arowolo had claimed that he was forced by the police to write
that his wife’s stab wounds were self-inflicted.
However, while giving evidence, Mr. Arowolo did a volte face
and insisted that his wife had only sustained cuts on her hands before he left
her to seek for help.
“In a statement, he wrote that she persistently stabbed
herself, that something went wrong either mentally or spiritually.
“I have not ignored this piece of evidence that he was
guided to write the statements… The statements were disjointed and
contradictory during testimony.
“I note that he proferred excuses for the strange behaviour
of his wife. This explanation obviously came from him and not from anyone
guiding him. The defendant in the box was trying hard to renege from his
earlier statements,” said the judge.
The judge also said that Mr. Arowolo’s claim that his late
wife had attacked him with a knife was inconsistent with the pathologist’s
revelation that the deceased received multiple stab wounds resulting to a
“blunt force trauma.”
Two prison wardens dragged Mr. Arowolo out of the court
room, after the judge rose, as he continued to scream and protest his
innocence.
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