Wesley Mathews, the Indian-American foster father of 3-year-old Sherin Mathews, was sentenced to life by a judge in Dallas for the tragic death of the Indian toddler in 2017, in a case that attracted much 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 Judge Amber Givens-Davis sentenced him to life in prison on Wednesday.
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 Sherin. He will be eligible for parole after 30 years' imprisonment, US media reports said.
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 Gaya, Bihar in 2016.
Mathews claimed she accidentally choked to death on milk.
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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. When he checked in on her 15 minutes later, Mathews said Sherin was missing.
Her badly decomposed body was found 15 days later in a culvert near the family's home.
He later admitted she died when he "physically assisted" her in drinking the milk and got chocked.
Reacting to the sentencing, Richardson Police tweeted that, "We feel justice has been served with today's verdict of life in prison given to Wesley Mathews by a jury of his peers.
"We would like to thank the law enforcement agencies and civilian partners for the resources and time spent on this case. We will always remember Sherin Mathews," the tweet said.
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."
After the verdict was read, De La Garza called the sentence "cruel and unusual punishment."