Justice Sherifat Sonaike of a Lagos High Court, sitting at Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS), yesterday set May 2, for judgement, after parties adopted their final written submissions in the murder case of 22-year-old Oluwabamise Ayanwola.
At the adoption yesterday, the defence counsel, Mr Abayomi Omotubora, stated that the prosecutor had failed to place sufficient material evidence before the court to establish a case against the defendant.
Omotubora argued that, in the analysis of evidence from prosecution witnesses 1 to 9, their testimonies did not indicate the specific act by the defendant, Andrew Nice, which caused the death of the deceased.
He emphasised that the voice note Ayanwola reportedly sent to her friend did not indicate the cause of her death either, and that, as a matter of law, it constituted hearsay, because the prosecutor had failed to call the friend who received the voice note as a witness.
Referring to the principle of “last seen person”, Omotubora insisted that it could not sustain a conviction without circumstantial evidence, noting that the prosecutor had established nothing beyond mere suspicions and doubtful gestures against the defendant.
Regarding prosecution witness one, Mary Jane, who was allegedly raped by Andrew Nice, he said the victim’s testimonies did not corroborate, adding that the prosecutor had failed to corroborate them by not calling a doctor to testify.
While adopting the final written submissions, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Lagos State, Dr Babajide Martins, stated that, considering the testimonies of prosecution witnesses 3, 7 and 8, the defendant was guilty of the offences as charged.
Martins informed the court that the issue of corroboration of Mary Jane’s testimony, as raised by the defence counsel, was not applicable in rape cases, but in cases of defilement.
On the argument of “last seen person” and the murder of Ayanwola, the prosecutor said the defendant’s evidence established that he was the last person with the deceased before her death. Rather than filing a complaint at the nearest police station or his office to exonerate himself, he fled to Osoosa, Sagamu, Ogun State, where officials of the Department of State Security Services apprehended him in 2022.