California: Wesley Mathews, who was convicted of fatally injuring his adopted daughter Sherin Mathews and is currently serving a life sentence, will continue to do so, a judge has ruled. It was reported that the judge Richardson has upheld the murder conviction and life sentence. After Mathews pleaded guilty to the Oct 7, 2017 murder of 3-year-old Sherin, a jury sentenced him to life in prison in 2019. In September 2019, he was denied a new trial.
The Indian American father admitted that he watched Sherin choke on her milk at about 3 am that morning. After determining she had died, he placed her body in a garbage bag and hid it in a culvert about a half mile away from the Mathews' Texas home. Mathews did not wake his sleeping wife Sini, a nurse, nor did he call 911 immediately after he determined his young daughter had died. After disposing of Sherin’s body, Mathews waited until 8 am that morning to call police and claim his daughter was missing. He initially told police that he had put the little girl outside the family home late night as a punishment for not drinking her milk, and opined that wolves might have taken away his daughter.
After a massive two-week search by multiple agencies, Sherin’s body was found in the culvert. Both the Mathews were initially charged and sent to jail, but charges against Sini were later dropped. In the appeal, Mathews raised four points challenging the admission of certain evidence. In his remaining two issues, “he argues that his life sentence violates the Eighth Amendment and that the trial court denied his common law right to allocution,” according to the ruling.
All points were denied. “I believe the 5th Court has accurately talked about most of the facts in the record. I did not see anything that jumped out at me as a factually wrong statement.” reports quoted Mike Casillas, Mathews’ appellate attorney, as saying. The case may still be appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the form of a petition for discretionary review. But Casillas said has a less than 10 per cent chance.
