Justice For Angel Bumpass: Black Woman Serving 60 Year Sentenced For A Murder She Did Not Commit

Angel Bumpass was found guilty of a murder that was committed in 2009. On October 3, 2019, she was sentenced for first-degree felony murder and attempt to commit especially aggravated robbery. The jury sentenced her after only 4 hours and 30 minutes approximately of deliberation.

Bumpass isn’t eligible for release until July 6, 2079, 60 years after her sentence began.

On January 16 2009 Angel Bumpass was eighth grade star roll student at Brown Middle School. That morning Angel rode the bus from her grandmother’s house to school. It was a normal day for Angel, nothing out of the ordinary or spectator happened for her. She rode the bus to arrive home at 2:30 pm….Nine years later on June 14, 2018, she was a 23 year old mother of two, in her second year of school enrolled at Jefferson Community and Technical College. She accepted to the nursing program to begin the program in August 2018. While also working a full time job. Around 6 that morning two detectives came to her door, shockingly, with a warrant for a felony murder to be served to Angel from May 2018.

Angel was 13, that was only 5”0, and weighted a mere 80 pounds at the time a 68 year old man was murdered. The evidence against Angel was two partial fingerprints that supposedly came from tape that was used to tie the victim up. The tape in question also had nine other fingerprints that are unknown and were not investigated. A hair was later found on the duct tape 10 years. The hair was never tested. Angel lawyers never got the original duct tape to lift their on prints. The lawyers stated that the duct tape after ten years was no longer available as it had been cut and balled up, yet a picture of the tape and fingerprints were allowed as evidence.

Angel lawyers really did wrong by her for this trial. Angel’s lawyers, Andrea Hayduk and Garth Best, failed to present any type of mitigating circumstances, character witnesses to construct a picture as to who Angel was at that point in her life. It’s like they showed up to the courtroom because they were forced to represent her during this trial. They didn’t make a strong case to prove Angel innocence.

Angel’s defense attorney decision not to investigate or present a defense resulted in a inadequate performance that was unreasonable.

They didn’t even mention the original detective Carl Fields was fired for planting evidence in another case. October 3, 2019 Angel was found guilty due to her lawyers not taking her case seriously. Two kids are missing the opportunity to have a mother in their life because of their lack of effort.

Mallory Vaughan, that was 13 years older than Angel that was found not guilty. Even though he confessed to his cell mate Nicholas Cheaton of killing Franklin Bonner and had witnesses that testified to him confessing to solely committing the murder of the victim.

Angel and Mallory were both adamant that they didn’t know each other and when the witnesses testified against the male co-defendant they also testified that they didn’t know Angel nor had the male co-defendant said anything about Angel involvement with him.