Two magistrates ruled that a couple who smoked large amounts of cannabis and later went on to kill their baby were not required to undergo drug testing when he was returned to their care, it can be revealed.

Despite the pair having repeatedly lied to social workers about the amount of cannabis they consumed, the magistrates ordered that Shannon Marsden and Stephen Boden be given custody of the child. 

Within weeks, 10-month-old Finley Boden, who was also known as Finley Marsden, suffered a horrendous catalogue of injuries at their hands.

The baby was found to have 71 bruises over his body and 57 fractures after he died on Christmas Day 2020  - just 39 days after Derby family court returned him to the couple's care.

Marsden and Boden were last month found guilty of murdering Finley and are to be sentenced on Friday.

It can also now be revealed that in making their decision to return Finley, the magistrates rejected a plea from social workers that - as well as drug testing - Boden and Marsden undergo a four-month supervised transition to establish if they were truly capable of looking after him.

Instead, Mrs Susan Burns JP and Mrs Kathy Gallimore JP ordered a shorter, two-month transition plan, which they said was a “reasonable and proportionate length of time” to protect his welfare.

The reasons the two magistrates gave for giving full custody of Finley to his parents can only now be reported, after the Telegraph, along with the BBC and Press Association, won a legal battle for their ruling to be published.

Finley had been made the subject of a child protection plan by Derbyshire social services a month before he was born, because of his parents’ heavy use of cannabis.

Two days after he was born in February 2020, social services warned in a "threshold" report, later submitted to the family court, that Marsden and Boden were unable to meet Finley’s basic care needs, leaving him at risk of physical and emotional harm.

As a result of continued concerns over their drug use, he was taken from them and sent to live with two carers.

Marsden and Boden’s trial heard that while he was living with his carers, Finley thrived. But after the baby was returned by order of the family court to his parents’ squalid home in Old Whittington, near Chesterfield, Boden and Marsden conspired to keep social workers and health professionals from seeing him, using Covid-19 social distancing measures as an excuse.

In the ruling, Mrs Burns and Mrs Gallimore said that although social workers had wanted drug testing and a longer four-month transition period, Finley’s legal guardian from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) argued this was too long and would “cause confusion” for Finley, and that his needs required a shorter time frame to help him settle and understand who his “primary carers are”.