ST. LOUIS &#8212 The first woman to be sentenced to death in the federal system since 1953 should not have been convicted twice for each of five murders, an appeals court panel ruled Monday.

A three-judge panel of the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case of Angela Johnson to federal district court to vacate half of her convictions.

The ruling does not mean that Johnson will leave death row. It leaves intact four death sentences and one life sentence. Prior to Monday’s ruling, she had eight and two, respectively.

“We’re very disappointed for Angela, her family, friends and supporters in light of this ruling,” defense attorney Dean Stowers of Des Moines said.

“We continue to believe in her case very strongly, that she was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death. We’ll continue fighting to get that situation reversed.”

Robert Teig, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Iowa, said prosecutors were confident the facts would support her convictions.

“We anticipate this won’t be the end of any review process but certainly, it’s a major first step in the appellate process.”

Johnson is in federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, appealing her conviction and death penalty.

Johnson was convicted of planning and carrying out the drug-related slayings of three adults and two children near Mason City, in 1993.

A federal jury found her guilty of aiding and abetting the murders to further a “continuing criminal enterprise.” She was also found guilty of the same crimes “while engaging in a drug conspiracy.”

The Supreme Court has held that a drug conspiracy violation is a lesser included offense of a continuing criminal enterprise.

The appeals court panel ruled that while prosecutors might prove Johnson guilty under either legal theory, she could not be convicted under both.

The court remanded the case to district court in Sioux City, to vacate the conspiracy murder convictions.

Johnson’s boyfriend Dustin Honken was also convicted of planning and carrying out the five murders and was sentenced to death after a separate federal trial. Iowa does not have a death penalty.

The two were convicted of killing two federal drug informants who once peddled methamphetamine produced by Honken. One of the informants, Greg Nicholson of Mason City, disappeared in June 1993 along with his girlfriend, Lori Duncan, also of Mason City, and her two daughters, Kandace Duncan, 10, and Amber Duncan, 6.

The other informant, Terry DeGeus of Britt, disappeared months later.

Their bodies were discovered in two graves outside of Mason City in 2000 after Johnson gave information about the locations of the graves to a jailhouse informant.

Honken, in federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., also has a pending appeal.

The last woman the U.S. government executed was Bonnie Brown Heady for the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in 1953. She was executed in the gas chamber at the Missouri state penitentiary that December. In June that year, Ethel Rosenberg was executed by electric chair after being found guilty of espionage.