USA - Pennsylvania. The state Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing hearing for Michelle Tharp

The state Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing hearing for Michelle Tharp, a woman on death row in the starvation death of her 7-year-old daughter. Tharp, 45, White, was sentenced to death in Washington County on 11-14-2000 after she was convicted of 1st-degree-murder in the April 18, 1998 death of her daughter. Tharp and her boyfriend Doug Bittinger both were charged with first-degree murder in the starvation death of Tharp's daughter, Tausha Lee Lanham, who weighed less than 12 pounds at the time of her death. The couple was charged a few days after they falsely reported that the child had been abducted from a mall in Steubenville, Ohio, April 18, 1998. The couple had dumped the child's body along a road in Follansbee, W.Va. After Tharp's trial, Bittinger was sentenced on the lesser charge to 15 to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal homicide, child endangerment and abuse of a corpse. Prosecutors said Bittinger's crime was not preventing the abuse by his girlfriend. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered a new penalty hearing on the grounds that her attorney failed to present evidence that may have persuaded a jury to spare her life, such as a history of mental illness, abuse throughout her childhood and borderline intellectual function.