Surely, the general rule in criminal as well as in civil cases that the evidence must be confined to the point in issue cannot be applied where the facts which constitute distinct offences are at the same time part of the transaction which is the subject of the charge. Evidence is necessarily admissible as to acts which are so closely and inextricably mixed up with the history of the criminal act itself as to form part of one chain of relevant circumstances, and so could not be excluded in the presentment of the case without the evidence being thereby rendered unintelligible. Thus, in cases of murder, evidence is admissible to show prior assaults by the accused upon the murdered person or menaces uttered to him by the accused, or to show conversely the irritable behaviour by the deceased to the accused. Again, the relations of the murdered man to his assailant, so far as they may reasonably be treated as explanatory of the conduct of the person charged with the crime, can be admitted to prove as integral parts of the history of the alleged crime for which the accused is on his trial. (See R. v. Bond (1906) 2 KB 389 as per Kennedy, J., at pp. 400 and 401).
— Idigbe, JSC. Ishola v State (1978) – SC.8/1977
