Jan 5, 2019 3 min read

A woman convicted of fatally starving her child has appealed a Washington County judge’s order that a jury should re-hear the death penalty phase of her case.

Michelle Sue Tharp, who will turn 50 later this month, last had a local address in Burgettstown.

She has been on death row since being convicted in 2000 for the first-degree murder of Tausha Lanham, 7.

In December, Tharp took her criminal case to the state Supreme Court for the second time hoping that a decision by Washington County President Judge Katherine B. Emery can be overturned.

The state Supreme Court in 2014 upheld Tharp’s conviction but decided instead to grant her a new proceeding in which a Washington County jury would decide if her penalty should be life imprisonment or death.

Washington County President Judge Katherine B. Emery heard testimony and argument on Tharp’s behalf, but was not swayed by her attorneys’ arguments that the passage of time and deaths or unavailability of witnesses made it impossible to present an adequate case.

The judge said prior testimony or depositions could be read into the record for the new jury to consider.

Lacking from the trial in 2000 before then-judge Paul Pozonsky was testimony on Tharp’s mental state that might have resulted in a punishment other than the death penalty, her attorneys contended.

In Pennsylvania, only a jury, not a judge acting alone, can impose a death sentence.

The information about Tharp’s latest appeal came to light Friday in a teleconference convened before Judge John DiSalle while Emery is on medical leave.

DiSalle noted Tharp’s filing with the state Supreme Court does not stop the case from proceeding on the county level.

However, attorneys James McHugh and Elizabeth Hadayia won’t be representing Tharp if her case eventually goes before a jury.

‘”I think we need to get Ms. Tharp counsel,” McHugh said via speakerphone. “We’re not going to go forward with the matter.”

McHugh recommended that a Philadelphia lawyer who is qualified to try a death penalty case be appointed by the court.

DiSalle said another telephone conference, not yet scheduled, would include the attorney that McHugh mentioned.

Assistant District Attorney John Friedmann said his office is answering Tharp’s petition filed with the Supreme Court, but when the Supreme Court might decide Tharp’s latest appeal is unknown.

“Trial counsel needs to be appointed,” Friedmann said. “I don’t think we can ever be too early on that.”

In ordering the new penalty phase in 2014, Justice Max Baer called the evidence of Tharp’s guilt “overwhelming,” writing she not only denied Tausha meals but physically restrained the child so she could not feed herself and asked others to perpetuate the same abuse.

Emery noted in her six-page opinion that Tausha, who weighed only 11.77 pounds at age 7, lacked fat in parts of the body where it normally accumulates, and had extreme wear on her teeth from grinding.

Tausha was falsely reported to have been abducted from a mall in Steubenville, Ohio, on April 18, 1998, when she actually died in bed at home.

According to trial testimony, Tharp feared Washington County Children and Youth Services would take away her other children, so the death was concealed.

Tausha’s body, in trash bags, was found dumped along a road in Follansbee, W.Va.

Tharp is serving her sentence in the State Correctional Institution at Muncy in central Pennsylvania.