A court has disqualified a lawyer who visited Migori Governor Okoth in jail and said he was cleared by the DPP to defend him against the charge of murdering his pregnant lover Sharon Otieno.
A new lawyer has been appointed by Sharon's family.
Obado and two others have denied the murder on the night of September 3 at Owade in Homa Bay.
The family will now be represented by a team of advocates led by Daniel Njoroge.
The new team takes over after the High Court disqualified Prof George Wajackoyah from representing the family.
In her ruling, justice Ngenye Macharia said Wajackoyah is privy to confidential information that would prejudice a fair trial for Obado and his co-accused.
She said the family is at liberty to engage other lawyers as his continued presence is heavily prejudicial to the trial.
Ngenye disqualified the professor after Obado successfully argued that he holds privileged information and may use it against him, resulting in an unfair trial.
During the hearing of Obado's application, his lawyers Kioko Kilukumi and Rogers Sagana told justice Macharia that on September 23 last year, two days after his arrest, Wajackoyah visited him at the Gigiri police station and sought his instructions on the case.
Kilukumi said Wajackoyah intimated to Obado that he had done a lot of consultancy work with the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
“Wajackoyah showed me correspondence between himself and the two offices and I was convinced that indeed he had good knowledge in criminal law practice. He further confirmed that the two offices nevertheless cleared him to represent me,” the governor said.
On Wednesday, the court directed the office of the DPP and lawyers representing the family to agree on the extent of participation by the family's legal team.
The case will be mentioned on Thursday next week.
Obado, 60, his personal assistant Michael Oyamo, and Caspal Obiero, a clerk in the Migori county government, have been charged.
The prosecution intends to call 42 witnesses.
Edited by R.Wamochie
