Fayette County mom imprisoned in daughter's starvation death walks free after evidence crumbles

A Fayette County woman who pleaded no contest to murdering her daughter and spent a decade in prison is now free after serious questions were raised about the prosecution’s key evidence.

The Fayette County District Attorney’s Office last week withdrew a homicide charge against Andrea Dusha, who was accused of starving her young daughter Lydia to death.

It took three years and three separate expert reports showing there was no homicide before Dusha was permitted to plead no contest to endangering the welfare of children and recklessly endangering another person.

Dusha, 36, was sentenced to time served and released following the hearing before Fayette County Common Pleas Judge Linda R. Cordaro on Sept. 22.

“A big motivating factor for Andrea was she just wanted this nightmare to be over,” said her defense attorney, Rob Perkins. “She just wanted to be done.”

Perkins expressed frustration that it took so long for the case to resolve.

“Three years they continued to defend this conviction, knowing it was based on materially false evidence,” Perkins said. “There’s no accountability. No apology to Andrea and her family. No statement to the public that they got it horribly wrong.”

But Fayette County District Attorney Michael Aubele said Monday there would be no apology.

“We never stopped fighting for Lydia, and we will not apologize,” Aubele said. “She got off easy. Lydia is not alive because of the actions of her parents.”

The case against the parents

Lydia was 23 months old when she died on Feb. 24, 2016, at Uniontown Hospital.

The investigation showed that the rented home the family shared was in squalid condition with no running water.

Both of her parents had a history of drug problems, and police found a hypodermic needle and open bottles of pills in the bathroom.

The morning she died, Lydia became unresponsive.

“Dusha stated that the child was drinking a mixture of water, Gatorade and Pedialyte from a sippy cup when the child’s eyes rolled in the back of her head, foam began to emit from the child’s nose and mouth, and the child quit breathing,” police wrote.

Dusha rushed her daughter to Uniontown Hospital, where Lydia was pronounced dead at 11:34 a.m.

At autopsy, Dr. Cyril Wecht said Lydia weighed just 10.03 pounds and that the cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration. Wecht, who died last year, ruled it a homicide.

Both Dusha and Lydia’s father, Michael Wright, were charged. Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty.

But Dusha agreed to testify against Wright, and in exchange, she pleaded no contest to third-degree murder. She was ordered to serve 9½ to 19 years in state prison.

Wright was convicted by a jury, also of third-degree murder, and sentenced to 15 to 40 years.

However, as part of Wright’s appeals, in 2022 his attorney reached out to Wecht seeking any remaining tissue slides for testing.

In a shocking response, Wecht emailed the lawyer on Sept. 15, 2022, and said he had made a mistake in Lydia’s autopsy. There was no chance, he wrote, that the child weighed just 10 pounds.

Based on that information, Wright sought — and was granted — a new trial.

Then newly elected, Aubele had a conflict of interest: He had worked for the firm that initially defended Wright. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office took over prosecuting the case.

They could not find an expert to say Lydia died from homicide. Instead, the AG’s office let Wright plead guilty to endangering the welfare of children and reckless endangerment.

He was ordered to serve 3½ to 7 years in prison and was released based on the time he’d already served.

However, Aubele refused to turn the prosecution of Dusha over to the AG’s office. Instead, he declared that his office would continue to pursue the homicide case against her.

For months, the parties argued in court, and in June, Cordaro granted Dusha a new trial.

No homicide ruling

At hearing last week, the prosecutor turned over a third expert report that, again, concluded Lydia weighed more than 10 pounds at the time of her death.

The report could not determine a cause of death or establish that Lydia died as a result of homicide.

Despite those findings, First Trial Assistant District Attorney Melinda Dellarose suggested they would continue to pursue a manslaughter charge.

But with no expert ruling it a homicide, Perkins said, there was no way Dusha would agree to a plea.

Finally, the prosecution agreed to the reduced charges based on the deplorable condition of the house at the time of Lydia’s death, Perkins said.

Aubele said allowing the plea to lesser charges doesn’t negate Dusha’s conduct, including leaving her daughter strapped in a car seat for hours and failing to get her to the hospital in a timely manner when she died.

“But with the lack of evidence to suggest otherwise, we couldn’t move forward,” Aubele told TribLive. “If a proper investigation had been done by the coroner’s office when this first happened, they would still be in jail.”

But Perkins, who has been a defense attorney for 20 years, said the blame cannot be solely placed on Wecht.

The job of a prosecutor, he said, is to be a “minister of justice.”

“Their job is to hold people accountable for criminal conduct,” Perkins said. “A prosecutor can’t continue when the evidence shows they are factually innocent of a charge.”

In Wright’s case, the attorney general’s office had the matter concluded in a matter of months.

“The evidence was the exact same,” Perkins said. “What Michael Aubele should have done was follow in their footsteps.

“He did the opposite of that.”