Introduction/Aim: Medicolegal autopsies are postmortem examinations performed at the instance of
the law, when a coroner or another authority is instructed to determine the cause, time and the
circumstances surrounding the cause of death. This is a retrospective study of all the medicolegal
autopsies done in the Department of Histopathology, University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH),
Benin City over a 20 year period (from 1st January 1990 to 31st December 2009) with the aim of collating
and analyzing all cases in order to establish a preliminary data of all medicolegal deaths and determine
the pattern of these cases.
Materials and Method: The major sources of information were the mortuary registers of the
Department of Histopathology UBTH. Also used were the duplicate copies of death certificates and Post
mortem reports of the cases. Cases were those in which full autopsies were done following standard
procedures as described in standard books and histology done where applicable.