CHARLESTON (AP) — A West Virginia woman has agreed to plead guilty Thursday in a federal death penalty case that arises from a drug informant’s 2005 murder.

Court papers filed Tuesday include a new felony conspiracy charge against Valerie Friend, alleging she shot Carla Collins while part of a Mingo County drug ring. An order from U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver set Thursday’s plea hearing for the 47-year-old, also identified in filings as Valeri Friend, in Charleston.

Federal prosecutors requested the plea hearing and declined comment Tuesday. Friend’s defense lawyers, Gary Collias of Charleston and Kevin McNally of Kentucky, did not immediately respond to messages requesting comment.

Friend and co-defendant George Lecco, 60, were found guilty in 2007 on federal charges that she killed Collins on Lecco’s orders, to protect their Mingo County drug ring.

The pair were convicted of a total of 13 felonies, including two that carry the death penalty. Although West Virginia abolished capital punishment for state crimes in 1965, it remains an option in federal cases.

The jury recommended death for each. But Copenhaver ordered a new trial in May. A juror, William Griffith, had failed to disclose a criminal record that included convictions for drug offenses, or that he faced a pending federal child pornography investigation.

Prosecutors allege Lecco’s ring sold drugs out of his pizza parlor. Following a February 2005 raid on the drive-thru business, Lecco cooperated with investigators. Collins had been aiding a federal drug task force at Lecco’s suggestion, but he allegedly ordered her silenced after he resumed dealing on the sly.

The jury found that Lecco had promised Friend cocaine and then supplied the pistol before Collins, a 33-year-old single mother, was shot and beaten to death in an abandoned mobile home. Her body was found a month later in a nearby shallow grave.

Four others pleaded guilty to roles in the drug ring and to helping hide or destroy evidence of the murder, including Patricia Burton. While she is not a defendant in Tuesday’s filing, called an information, it alleges Burton helped murder Collins and had relayed the pistol from Lecco to Friend.

A grand jury reindicted Lecco and Friend in June on 12 counts, the most serious still threatening each with the death penalty.

Lecco and Friend were granted separate retrials earlier this month.

“The Friend defense team will insist that co-defendant Lecco personally killed Collins, without any involvement by Friend,” Copenhaver wrote in that ruling, citing the lawyers’ arguments. “Defendant Lecco will counter that Collins was killed without his knowledge or participation.”

Both defendants remain jailed. Lecco’s retrial has not been set. Friend’s was slated for Oct. 27, and Copenhaver last week denied a request to delay it. He also heard pretrial motions in her case Monday.