Sentencing Remarks of Mr Justice Picken: R v Matthew Jones
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 18 July 2019 |
| Court | Crown Court |
| Subject Matter | Sentencing Remarks |
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R v MATTHEW JONES
Newport Crown Court
Sentencing Remarks – 17 July 2019
1. Matthew Jones, the jury’s verdict is that you are Guilty of Manslaughter. I must now
sentence you in the light of that verdict.
2. This is a very sad case. Your 15-week old son, Cody, died on 8 December 2016 after an
incident which occurred when he was in your sole care at home as his mother and your
then partner, Paula Williams, was out helping one of her sisters pack up house. You were
alone with Cody for no more than an hour, yet at the end of that period Cody had
sustained injuries to his head which were so severe that the next day he died as a result.
3. Your case was that what happened to Cody was an accident. You said that you were
holding Cody with your left arm under his bottom and your right arm supporting his
back, with Cody’s head against your chest, as you were reaching to pick up some teething
gel from Cody’s cot. As you did this, you maintained, Cody pushed himself backwards
away from your chest and landed on the bed on the top of the shoulder and the bottom
of his neck with his feet in the air. You said that he, then, bounced off the bed, twisting
as he did so, before then landing back on the bed with his forehead as the first point of
contact and taking his full weight.
4. The prosecution’s case was that Cody died not as the result of any accident but in
consequence of the deliberate violence inflicted on him by you as a reaction to Cody
crying and your inability to settle him. Their position was that Cody’s injuries in the form
of multi-focal bleeding in the brain and multiple retinal haemorrhages are consistent not
with accident but with shaking and impact and, in any event, either shaking or impact.
5. In support of this case, the prosecution relied upon a wide range of expert medical
evidence. The experts - seven in all – spoke with one voice: that what happened was no
accident and that what you said happened cannot have happened. The jury’s verdict
shows that this was also the view which they reached in this case. They rejected your case
that Cody merely fell on to a bed from a low height and that he did so by accident. They
accepted instead that Cody was killed not because you intended to kill him or cause him
really serious harm but because you, his father, essentially ‘lost it’ when frustrated at
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