Judge dismisses murder conviction of woman accused of killing man at age 13.
Judge Dismisses Charges Against Woman Convicted of Murder at 13
A judge in Tennessee has made a stunning decision, dismissing charges against Angel Bumpass, a Chattanooga woman who was convicted in 2019 of a murder she allegedly committed when she was just 13 years old.
Hamilton County Judge Amanda Dunn, in a surprising turn of events, has dismissed the first-degree murder and aggravated robbery convictions for Angel Bumpass. Now 28 years old and a mother of two, Angel was preparing to enter nursing school when she was arrested in 2018. She was convicted in 2019 of the murder of Franklin Bonner, who was found tied to a table and chair in his home, apparently killed during a robbery attempt.
“A conviction does not always mean justice,” Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp said after the charges were dismissed. “The way that Mr. Bonner was duct taped and killed in the ransacking of the home. In the state’s opinion, it is virtually impossible that a 13-year-old girl could have done this alone.”
At the time of Bonner’s murder, Angel would have been 13 years old, 5 feet tall, and just 80 pounds in weight. She told police she didn’t know anything about Bonner’s death and that she never met him or had been in his home.
Along with Angel, a man named Mallory Vaughn was also arrested for Bonner’s murder. However, the charges against Vaughn were dropped due to a lack of evidence. The case took a complicated turn when it was revealed that the cousin of Vaughn, who was in federal prison for a bank robbery, had initially claimed that Vaughn had admitted to burglarizing Bonner’s home and binding the victim. However, the cousin later changed his story and said he had learned of the case through Detective Karl Fields, the original lead detective on the case who was later accused of misconduct. The charges against Vaughn were ultimately dropped.
Both Mallory Vaughn and Angel Bumpass claimed they didn’t know each other, yet they were tried together. The prosecution argued that Angel’s fingerprints on the duct tape implicated her in the crime, but the defense pointed out that nine other fingerprints were found on the duct tape and that Angel had an alibi for the day of the crime as she was in school.
Angel was found guilty of a crime she allegedly committed when she was 13 years old and sentenced to life in prison, while Vaughn, who would have been 26 at the time of the murder, was found not guilty.
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With one suspect found not guilty and another’s conviction overturned, DA Wamp has vowed to continue the search for the true murderer.
“We know that there is at least one person responsible for this criminal offense who has not yet been located or identified as a suspect,” Wamp said. “It is my opinion that we must refocus our efforts on identifying the individual who did this.”
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