Maurice Houle will spend 31 to 60 years in prison for his role in the 2018 murder of 3-year-old Matthew Maison, after a judge ruled Thursday that the St. Clair County man should serve the sentence tied to his guilty plea. Houle, 29, had admitted last month to second-degree murder and three counts of assaulting, resisting or obstructing a police officer.
The sentence gives the case its latest major court outcome and answers the question many people have been following through Court TV live coverage: how long Houle would serve after striking a deal that removed a felony murder charge from the case. The plea agreement left him exposed to a lengthy prison term, and the judge settled on a minimum that keeps him behind bars for decades.
Houle’s punishment matters because the case has moved far beyond the day Matthew was found dead. The boy’s death in 2018 led to charges against Houle and Amanda Mae Maison, and the proceedings have now started to produce final outcomes after more than seven years. Court records show the child died from blunt force trauma from his injuries and possible suffocation, a finding that matched the account presented in court about the abuse he suffered.
That record also explains why Amanda Mae Maison remains central to the case even now. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after admitting she killed her son in February 2018, and she told the court that she and Houle came up with a plan to conceal how he died. At the same time, she admitted that Houle physically abused Matthew throughout their relationship, that she physically abused him too, and that she intentionally concealed his injuries from Child Protective Services and other law enforcement officials during investigations.
Her own words left little room for a clean break from the events that killed the child. Court records say she acknowledged that she willfully and wantonly allowed an environment to exist where Matthew was systematically abused and that those abuses eventually led to his death. That is the friction at the center of the case: the boy’s mother was also one of the people accused of helping hide what was happening to him.
Maison, 33, of Port Huron Township, remains remanded to the St. Clair County Jail until her sentencing at 11 a.m. on Sept. 11. She faces up to life in prison. The next court date will determine whether her punishment matches the scale of the conduct she admitted in a case that began with first-degree murder charges and has now entered its closing phase.
