A judge has thrown out the convictions of two Columbus women accused of assaulting a Vicksburg woman more than a decade ago.

Tammy Vance and Leigh Stubbs were convicted in 2001 in Lincoln County for morphine possession and aggravated assault.

Fourteenth Circuit Judge Michael Taylor threw out the convictions last week, and the two were released Thursday, two days shy of 11 years in jail.

A hearing is set for Aug. 6 to determine if the women will face trial again.

Vance and Stubbs were charged with aggravated assault, unlawful possession of morphine, conspiracy to possess morphine and grand larceny in the sexual assault of a 21-year-old Vicksburg woman at a Brookhaven motel on March 6, 2000.

The women rented the room while on a weekend pass from a Columbus drug rehabilitation center.

Evidence presented at trial said the 21-year-old victim had overdosed on morphine. Prosecutors said she had been sexually assaulted, bitten and stuffed in the tool box of Stubbs’ truck.

In February, lawyers with the Mississippi Innocence Project argued prosecutors in the original trial failed to hand over evidence damaging to the state’s case.

Innocence Project attorneys said there were questions about a witness’s testimony regarding bite-mark testing and a videotape that prosecutors showed of two women moving a body and whether prosecutors withheld an FBI analysis of the same tape was far less conclusive.

Taylor said in his decision that the failure to turn over the FBI report merited a new trial.

“The video evidence was material and the inability of the defense to challenge or counter it merits a new trial,” Taylor wrote in the decision.

In 2003 before the information about the withheld evidence, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the convictions of Vance and Stubbs.