Justice for Sherin: Texas Court Upholds Wesley Mathews’ Murder Conviction and Life Sentence
- The 40-year-old Richardson man was convicted in 2019 of fatally injuring his three-year-old adopted daughter.
A Texas court has denied an appeal by Wesley Mathews of Richardson, was convicted in 2019 of fatally injuring his three-year-old adopted daughter Sherin Mathews. KRLD NewsRadio 1080 reported that the murder conviction and life sentence have been upheld for the 40-year-old father. He is currently serving a life sentence.
In the appeal, reported by KRLD NewsRadio 1080, 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, according to the radio station.
“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,” Mike Casillas, Mathews’ appellate attorney told KRLD NewsRadio 1080. The case may still be appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in the form of a petition for discretionary review. However, Casillas told the radio station that that has a less than 10 percent chance.
After Mathews pleaded guilty to the Oct. 7, 2017 murder of the toddler, a jury in Dallas County, Texas District Court deliberated for just three hours before delivering a life sentence to Mathews in 2019. He was denied a new trial in September 2019.
Mathews had told the jury that on the night of her death he had yelled at Sherin to drink her milk. The little girl became startled and started to cry and cough at the same time, causing her to choke. Mathews said he watched his daughter as she choked and tried to intervene by shaking her. Her head rolled in all directions until her body became prone, he said. Mathews testified on the stand: “I tried to shake Sherin so that she would come out of her spell. Nothing was working. Her head rolled in all directions and then went still.” He continued: “I was paralyzed with fear.” According to news reports at the time, Mathew got emotional and apologized to his dead daughter for failing her. “I detest myself,” he testified, asking jurors to “please forgive me.”
Mathews testified that he took the little girl’s body, stuffed it into a garbage bag — to “keep it safely preserved” — then, drove to a culvert a short distance from their Richardson, Texas home and placed her body there.
According to media and police reports, 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 her body, Mathews did a load of laundry and waited until 8 a.m. 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 captured his daughter.
After a massive two-week search by multiple agencies, Sherin’s body was found in the culvert. Mathews’ wife Sini was initially charged and jailed for child abandonment; the charges were eventually dropped.