In Matthew's case, the prosecution submitted that Louise Woodward caused injuries to the baby by shaking him violently and throwing him against a flat surface. The jury at the court in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the US, held the au pair guilty. However, following an appeal amidst conflicting medical evidence, the Middlesex County Superior Court acquitted the suspect.

Matthew was comatose on arrival at the hospital. He had a fractured skull and a brain so swollen from internal bleeding that it ejected a blood clot on the hospital floor during surgery. The prosecution argued it as a clear case of trauma due to violent shaking. Medical experts flown in by the defence claimed that the death was caused by a previous, undetected head injury that reopened by minor jarring. This could have occurred at the same time as another fracture that was found on his wrist.

The prosecution's problem was the lack of physical evidence that the baby had been shaken and dashed