AFTER spending more than 46 years in prison for the murder of a four-year-old girl in 1978, the Court of Appeal has quashed the 50-year sentence imposed on Peter Matthews and ordered that he be re-sentenced urgently by a High Court judge.

In a judgment delivered yesterday, Justices of Appeal Nolan Bereaux, Maria Wilson and Geoffrey Henderson ruled that the resentencing exercise conducted in May 2025, was fundamentally flawed, primarily because the High Court judge had failed to properly determine Matthews’ age at the time of the offence.

Matthews was convicted in 1984 for the 1978 murder of four-year-old Roslyn Lucas, who was found dead at her home at Providence Estate, St James, after being sexually assaulted.