A mother who starved her seven-year-old daughter to death was cleared of murder after prosecutors accepted her defence of diminished responsibility.
Angela Gordon, 35, who admitted the manslaughter of Khyra Ishaq earlier this month, was formally found not guilty of murder by jurors at Birmingham Crown Court, the Press Association reports.
Khyra died in May 2008 after being taken to hospital from the her home in Handsworth, Birmingham, in an emaciated condition.
The girl and five other children in the care of Gordon and her partner Junaid Abuhamza, 30, had been denied food during months of cruelty, the court was told.
Khyra eventually died after succumbing to an infection.
The detective who headed the investigation says the discovery of the dead girl had reduced even the most hardened officers to tears.
Both Gordon and Abuhamza entered guilty pleas to a charge of manslaughter at the start of their trial. Abuhamza's plea was accepted by the prosecution but Gordon's was rejected and had remained on trial for murder.
They both also admitted five charges of child cruelty.
The decision to accept Gordon's plea of not guilty to murder was taken in the sixth week of a retrial after several days of psychiatric assessment and legal argument.
"The jury already know that Angela Gordon has been assessed by three psychiatrists," her lawyer Michael Burrows says.
"From what they have said in reports, it is clear and beyond dispute that Angela Gordon was, from the beginning of 2008, depressed, and for a period of around a month before Khyra's death, severely depressed."
The two will be sentenced at the end of next week.
"The very people who should have protected Khyra - her mother Angela Gordon and Junaid Abuhamza - killed her through systematic abuse," said Detective Inspector Sean Russell.
"Khyra's untimely death was ultimately caused by an overwhelming infection brought on by severe malnutrition - a cause of death you don't expect to see in the Western world in the 21st Century."
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