Joby Anthony Rowe, 26, had pleaded not guilty to child homicide, but the jury rejected the argument put forward by his defence counsel.

Instead, the jury found Rowe had shaken his baby girl Alanah on August 29, 2015, giving her brain damage that led to her death the following day – the day before she turned three months old.

Related: Trial begins for man accused of violently shaking baby daughter

It took the jury one day to return a verdict, a little over a year after Rowe’s first trial ended with a jury unable to reach a verdict.

The court heard that in the lead-up to the incident, Rowe had told his then-partner and Alanah’s mother, Stephanie Knibbs, that their daughter would not stop crying while he was caring for her and Ms Knibbs was at work.

On August 29, Alanah cried during a car trip to an ATM and to drop Ms Knibbs off at work.

Alanah was so upset that Ms Knibbs was reluctant to go to work, although she did work her shift that ended at 2.20pm.

When she returned home, she found Alanah lying on the change table and standing over her was Rowe, who said something to the effect of, “Something is wrong with Alanah”.

When Ms Knibbs picked her daughter up, she found her limp and floppy with blood coming from her nose.

She then discovered she wasn’t breathing and called her stepmother Joy Knibbs, before calling triple zero.

Joy Knibbs came around to the home and they both tried to resuscitate Alanah while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

After paramedics arrived, Alanah was stabilised and flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.

Blood tests upon her arrival at the hospital found no explanation for her condition, but a CT scan revealed she had suffered recent and acute bleeding on her brain.

It was also discovered she had sustained significant bleeding in her eyes, bleeding in her spinal cord, and substantial swelling of her brain.

Alanah’s condition was deemed incompatible with life and on August 30, she was taken off life support.

Three expert medical witnesses called by the prosecution during the trial all examined Alanah and came to the conclusion her injuries were caused by shaking.

“The only reasonable explanation on the evidence that you've heard is that her father, the accused man, shook her with forces beyond that which she could generate herself - therefore it must have been some outside force - and he told the police she had not fallen, she had not been dropped, [her half-sister] was not rough with her, and there was no other adult between Stephanie being dropped off at the Union Hotel and returning home that Alanah had been in contact with,” Crown prosecutor Ben Ihle told the jury in his closing argument.

Rowe’s defence counsel, James Fitzgerald, had argued the prosecution’s case relied on drawing an inference from medical opinion, and there were no witnesses to say Rowe had shaken his daughter, nor had he admitted to doing so.

Mr Fitzgerald said evidence from those who knew Rowe, the maternal health nurse, and the midwife showed he was a “committed, gentle and loving father”.

The medical experts had tried to make sense of Alanah’s presentation and went through a diagnostic process, he said, but this did not present a “robust basis” on which to build a case beyond reasonable doubt.

He refuted the prosecution’s assertion that in the week before her death Alanah had often been screaming; he said she had been unsettled, but text messages indicated she would eventually settle.

A jury was unable to reach a verdict following last year’s trial, having been locked in deliberations for three days before telling judge Lex Lasry it would be futile to continue.

Read more: Jury urged not to try to ‘give closure’

Child homicide is an offence similar to manslaughter, but applies when the a child is aged under six.

A pre-sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 27.