The five-member S.C. Supreme Court unanimously reversed Regina McKnight's 2001 conviction, ruling her trial attorney made several serious errors.

McKnight, 31, was convicted of homicide by child abuse for killing her fetus by using cocaine. She is serving a 12-year sentence at a state women's prison in Greenwood.

The 15th Circuit solicitor's office in Conway hasn't decided whether to retry McKnight, Deputy Solicitor Fran Humphries said Monday.

"There really is very little that we, as prosecutors, can do to sort of appeal-proof these kinds of issues," he said. "We're basically left with the same case."

Humphries said the S.C. attorney general's office, which represented his office in the appeal, might ask the justices to reconsider their ruling, though he acknowledged it would be a long shot given their unanimous decision.

Greenwood attorney C. Rauch Wise, one of McKnight's appellate attorneys, said Monday he will seek to have his client released on bail pending a new trial.

"I'm delighted," said Wise, general counsel for the state American Civil Liberties Union chapter, about the ruling. "I'm getting ready to visit her now."

McKnight's first trial in January 2001 ended in a mistrial, though she was convicted in a second trial in May 2001.

The Supreme Court in 2003 rejected McKnight's initial appeal. But the justices said Monday her public defender was "ineffective" in preparing for the second trial by failing to recall a key expert witness who testified in the first trial, and by relying on another expert whose testimony "undermined the defense."

"In light of counsel's thorough investigation and examination of witnesses at the first trial, counsel, in our view, was deficient in failing to conduct a reasonable investigation which resulted in a substantially weaker defense at the second trial," Chief Justice Jean Toal wrote for the court.