From CJ Robinson, District Attorney
19th Judicial Circuit of Alabama
In August, an Elmore County jury found Kristopher Matthews guilty of Aggravated Child Abuse. The jury found Matthews caused the death of his two month old son, Karson by neglecting to provide his son with nourishment and/or medical care. Karson Matthews (the youngest of at least five Matthews children) was born weighing 6 lbs. 2 oz. and died two months later weighing substantially less. In an interview with law enforcement, Kristopher Matthews admitted to having never taken Karson to the doctor after being released from the hospital after birth. He claimed he never personally fed his child and had no duty to do so since he was the father.
Presiding Circuit Judge for the Nineteenth Circuit Amanda Baxley addressed Matthews in court, “This case is horrific and the jury’s message to me after the verdict was for all people connected to the death of this baby to be held responsible. I wish I could sentence you to more than 20 years, but the law at the time of this offense handcuffed the prosecution and handcuffs me as well. Thankfully, the legislature has updated the law to address situations like this and I appreciate them doing so.” Judge Baxley then imposed the maximum sentence of 20 years.
In July 2024, an Elmore County jury convicted Shirley Matthews, Kristopher’s wife, of the same charges, and she was also sentenced by Judge Baxley to serve the maximum of 20 years in the Alabama Department of Corrections.
District Attorney CJ Robinson said, “For everyone who thinks a 20 year sentence isn’t long enough, I 100% agree with you. When I wrote Winston’s Law in 2016 (inspired by an Elmore County case) my goal was to enhance the penalties for abusing young children. At that time, the original intent was to prevent a criminal from receiving a lessor sentence when a severely abused child miraculously survived death. It didn’t take long to realize that this law needed to be extended to include enhanced sentences for cases where a child death results not only from certain acts performed, but due to necessities or care being withheld from that child.
We worked hard to fix that with our legislative partners (including adding additional language to the Child Abuse statute after the Autauga County Journey Daycare case from 2022). If this crime happened today, we could seek up to 99 years in prison for Krstopher and Shirley Matthews. Unfortunately, in this case, 20 years is the maximum sentence available.”
“The photos in this case were worse than you would expect to see in a horror movie. This withered child’s body was nothing but a dirty, skin-covered skeleton. A haunting image that no one who saw it will ever forget. Kristopher and Shirley Matthews completely destroyed the life of their baby boy by neglecting his existence until he died. No question, this is one of the hardest cases we have ever had to prosecute. The suffering and agonizing death of this baby was completely avoidable.
Evil is real. Plain and simple. I like to think that if any human encountered a dying infant on the side of the road, we would stop to help and seek emergency medical attention immediately…because that’s just the right thing to do. While I knew everyone didn’t think like that, part of me wanted to believe things like this couldn’t happen in Autauga, Chilton, or Elmore Counties. Pslams 127:3 states ‘Children are a gift from the Lord’ and to imagine this child crying out in agony for help until he didn’t have the strength to do anything but slowly gasp for breath until his body just shut down makes me angry to the very core of my soul. Honestly, prison is too good for what they deserve, but it’s all the law will allow.”
