Justice Munta Abimbola of the Oyo State High Court, Ibadan has sentenced Yewande Oyediran, a female lawyer, to seven years imprisonment after she was found guilty of stabbing her husband to death.
This is coming just days after Maryam Sanda, daughter of rejected ICPC board nominee, Maimuna Aliyu, was remanded in Suleja prison for allegedly stabbing her husband, Bilyamin Bello, to death in their home in Abuja.
Oyediran, a staff of the Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) in the Oyo State Ministry of Justice, stabbed her husband to death on February 2, 2016, at Akobo area of Ibadan.
She was arraigned on a single charge of murder, to which she pleaded not guilty.
Delivering the judgement on Monday, Justice Abimbola held that the prosecution was able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant caused the death of the deceased, but it failed to prove that she did it intentionally.
Abimbola said the evidence before him shows that the convict and her late husband had frequently engaged in domestic violence, and that the defendant had admitted to once stabbing her husband with a pair of scissors.
He also adjudged the evidence of the couple’s landlord and wife, Mr and Mrs Akinpelu, as credible.
The landlord and his wife had told the court that they saw the convict holding a knife, while the deceased was in a pool of blood.
“Having seen the defendant holding a knife and the defendant had earlier confirmed that she had earlier stabbed her husband with a pair of scissors a day before, I hold that it was the defendant that stabbed the deceased,” Abimbola said.
The court also took into consideration the autopsy report written by Abideen Oluwashola, a consultant from the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan.
“According to the autopsy report, the deceased died as a result of shock from a deep wound caused by a sharp object,” Abimbola said.
The court said that the evidence of the convict could not be relied upon, because her statement with the police was different from her statement before the court.
