EVIDENCE shows a Cwmbran man accused of killing his baby granddaughter is an unpleasant liar but not a murderer, a jury was told today.

Mark Jones, 45, is on trial at Newport Crown Court for the murder of Amelia Rose Jones, who was 41 days old when she died on November 19, 2012.

The defendant, of no fixed address, denies the charge.

Defending Jones, Roger Thomas QC told the jury the baby died as a result of starvation of oxygen causing brain damage and from a blunt head injury.

But he said evidence was unclear in showing Jones had intentionally sought to harm his granddaughter and that it would be a “step too far” to convict him for murder.

Earlier in the trial, Jones had said he had tripped onto Amelia after slipping on a toy. He said a day later he dropped her while he shook a bottle for her and that she banged her head on his daughter’s kitchen floor in Waun Hywel, Pontnewydd.

Mr Thomas said: “If you intend to hurt someone, man, woman or child...you don’t think: ‘She will probably die in a day or so because I have damaged her brain.’”

And of Jones he said: “This defendant is a self-confessed liar and fraud. He has lied repeatedly and he has encouraged other people to lie on his behalf. The result is a mess largely of his own making.

“You probably don’t like him very much. For all I know you don’t like him at all.

“It is perhaps not surprising that in the underachieving, grey existence Mr Jones looks for sympathy, understanding, recognition and over a period of years, one of these has been the claim that he was seriously ill...it was thoroughly unattractive.

“He has little going for him. A series of failed relationships, several children, no regular work, it would seem. He is unable to read but follows the old chestnut of looking at paper or is someone who says: ‘I have left my glasses at home’.”

On lies Jones told his daughter and Amelia's mother Sarah that he was seriously ill and was suffering from cancer, a brain tumour and diabetes, Mr Thomas conceded the defendant’s behaviour had been “indefensible”.

He added: “It was mean, nasty and indefensible. I am not a psychiatrist but there must be something that leads Mr Jones to act that way.”

Mr Justice Wyn Williams will begin summing up on Monday.

Proceeding.