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The Court of Ap­peal has or­dered a sec­ond re-sen­tenc­ing for a St James man con­vict­ed of rap­ing and mur­der­ing a four-year-old girl as a teenag­er, af­ter pre­vi­ous­ly es­cap­ing the manda­to­ry death penal­ty.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered Thurs­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Nolan Bereaux, Maria Wil­son and Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son up­held an ap­peal by Pe­ter Matthews chal­leng­ing the 50-year prison sen­tence im­posed for the es­pe­cial­ly heinous crime.

Matthews, of Up­per Bournes Road, St James, was con­vict­ed of the bru­tal mur­der of Roslyn Lu­cas. On Au­gust 26, 1976, Lu­cas’ moth­er left her with a neigh­bour while she went to work. When she re­turned the fol­low­ing morn­ing, she found her daugh­ter dead in the apart­ment. A post-mortem re­vealed that the child had been raped and died of heart fail­ure.