Indian-American adoptive father of Sherin Mathews sentenced to life
Houston (US): Wesley Mathews, the Indian-American foster father of three-year-old Sherin Mathews, was sentenced to life by a judge in Dallas on Wednesday for the tragic death of the Indian toddler in 2017, in a case that attracted international attention.
Mathews, 39, pleaded guilty Monday to a lesser charge of injury to a child in Sherin's death. He was originally charged with capital murder by authorities in the US state of Texas.
Mathews stared ahead and did not look at jurors as the judge sentenced him to life in prison, US media reports said.
The 12-member jury deliberated Wednesday afternoon for about three hours before coming to a unanimous decision to give Mathews a sentence of life in the death of his adopted daughter, Sherin. He will be eligible for parole after 30 years' imprisonment.
Prosecutors argued that Mathews, hailing from Kerala, killed Sherin in October 2017. She was adopted by Mathews and his wife Sini Mathews from an orphanage in Bihar in 2016.
Mathews claimed she accidentally choked to death on milk.
Prosecutor Sherre Thomas argued that Mathews' testimony was just another lie. She said testimony and medical records show that it was "medically impossible for a child who is 3 years old to stand up and choke to death" as Mathews claimed.
"It means he's still a liar. It means he killed that little girl. And when he killed her, he panicked," Thomas argued, WFAA TV reported.
She said Mathews also took the time to clean up himself and turned off the location tracker on his phone to try to hide what he had done.
Mathews did not tell investigators where his daughter's body was. When her body was found, it was so badly decomposed that the medical examiner could not determine an exact cause of death.
"There's nothing left of her, her teeth had fallen out," Thomas said. "He covered his crime. He got away with that."
While prosecutors asked the jury to hand down a life sentence, defence attorney Rafael De La Garza argued that Mathews was a good father who panicked when his daughter choked and did not call for help.
He argued that prosecutors could not prove that Mathews killed his child and said he was only guilty of not calling 911, the emergency helpline.
During closing arguments, De La Garza walked over to Mathews and placed his hands on his shoulders.
"This is something he will live with for the rest of his life," the attorney told jurors. After the verdict was read, De La Garza called the sentence "cruel and unusual punishment," WFAA TV reported.
Mathews initially told police that Sherin went missing on October 7, 2017, after he put her outside their home at 3 am in Richardson, Texas because she would not drink her milk. Her badly decomposed body was found 15 days later in a culvert near the family's home.
His story evolved during the course of the investigation.
He initially claimed that as punishment for not drinking her milk he sent Sherin outside at 3 am to stand by a tree outside the backyard of their home.
When he checked in on her 15 minutes later, Mathews said Sherin was missing. He later admitted she died when he "physically assisted" her in drinking the milk and got chocked.
On the witness stand during the sentencing trial, Mathews said he panicked after his daughter's accidental death. He said he wrapped her body in a blue trash bag and dumped her in a culvert so she would be near the home.
Thomas argued that Sherin suffered abuse the entire time she lived in the US. Medical records show that she had five broken bones that were at various stages of healing.
Police charged Sherin's foster mother Sini, a registered nurse, with child abandonment in November 2017, after her husband told officials the couple left the toddler alone the night of her death while they went to dinner with their biological daughter.
Sini's case was dismissed in March this year after prosecutors said they could not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Sini sat in the courtroom during closing arguments on Wednesday.
After the judge read the sentence, she quickly left the courtroom without giving a comment to waiting reporters. She and Wesley Mathews were both arrested after Sherin's body was found. The couple later lost custody of their biological daughter.
Sherin's death attracted the attention of the Indian government and the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj took keen interest in the case and also instructed the Indian mission in Houston to make sure that the Indian toddler received justice. India further tightened the adoption process after Sherin's tragic death.
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
