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#487 Guest Host Conor Hall with Angel Bumpass · Wrongful Conviction

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, It's Connor Hall, the producer for Wrongful Conviction. As
0:03
Speaker 1: I mentioned previously, Jason and Kalia ah Lee are on
0:06
Speaker 1: their honeymoon, so they're letting me fill in for a
0:08
Speaker 1: few more episodes. And again I promise not to screw
0:11
Speaker 1: it up. So here we go. On January sixteenth, two
0:18
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, sixty eight year old Franklin Bonner was
0:22
Speaker 1: found suffocated by duct tape with signs of blunt force trauma.
0:27
Speaker 1: His Chattanooga, Tennessee home was ransacked, but no valuables appeared
0:32
Speaker 1: to be missing. The duck tape held eleven fingerprints, but
0:36
Speaker 1: no hits came up in the national database until nine
0:40
Speaker 1: years later when they ran the Prince again and two
0:44
Speaker 1: partial prints appeared to match twenty three year old Angel Bumpus,
0:48
Speaker 1: who was thirteen years old at the time of the crime.
0:51
Speaker 1: Despite a plausible explanation for the presence of her fingerprints
0:54
Speaker 1: and an equally implausible theory of her guilt, she was
0:58
Speaker 1: sent away for life in prison. And this is wrongful conviction.
1:09
Speaker 2: Wrongful conviction has always given voice to innocent people in prison,
1:12
Speaker 2: and now we're expanding that voice to you. Call us
1:16
Speaker 2: at eight three three two o seven four six sixty six,
1:20
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1:22
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1:25
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1:27
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1:31
Speaker 2: future episode call us eight three three two oh seven
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Speaker 2: four six sixty six.
1:45
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction, where we have a story
1:48
Speaker 1: that's just so ridiculous for so many reasons. Uh. You know,
1:54
Speaker 1: first and foremost, how young the accused was at the
1:57
Speaker 1: time of the crime. However, the details of the crime
2:01
Speaker 1: make it even less plausible. And to help explain it all,
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Speaker 1: we welcome defense attorney Bill Massey, thank you, and of
2:07
Speaker 1: course the still relatively young woman who endured this insanity
2:12
Speaker 1: in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Angel Bumpus, thank you for joining us.
2:16
Speaker 3: You're welcome, thanks for having me.
2:18
Speaker 1: So can you tell us a little bit about, you know,
2:20
Speaker 1: growing up in Chattanooga.
2:21
Speaker 3: When I was in Chattanooga, I lived with my grandparents,
2:26
Speaker 3: Chryl Bumpus and Bayliss Smith. And I mean, it's not
2:30
Speaker 3: nothing exciting to tell. At that point in their life
2:33
Speaker 3: when I was around, they were already well off into
2:36
Speaker 3: their forties and fifties. My grandma, she stayed home all day,
2:40
Speaker 3: could clean. My granddad went to work, came home. I
2:43
Speaker 3: was a good student. I won a lot of awards
2:45
Speaker 3: and different things. And like I was in eighth grade,
2:49
Speaker 3: I believe so long ago even when it happened, Like
2:53
Speaker 3: I didn't watch the news growing up as a kid,
2:56
Speaker 3: so I didn't even know anything about it. Like the
2:59
Speaker 3: knowledge I have is from when I got the discovery.
3:02
Speaker 3: That's the knowledge that I have.
3:03
Speaker 1: And the crime in question occurred on January sixteenth, two
3:06
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. The victim was a sixty eight year
3:09
Speaker 1: old man named Franklin Bonner, who was known locally as
3:13
Speaker 1: the lottery Man, alluding to the numbers game that he operated.
3:16
Speaker 1: He was also alleged to sell some wheed on the side,
3:19
Speaker 1: none of which should have gotten him killed, but being
3:22
Speaker 1: known to have extra cash on hand may have played
3:26
Speaker 1: a role.
3:27
Speaker 4: January sixteen, two thousand and nine, mister Bonner was in
3:31
Speaker 4: his home. His wife came home and had lunch with him,
3:36
Speaker 4: and then left back to work. When she came back
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Speaker 4: home a little after five in the afternoon, she found
3:43
Speaker 4: him taped to the chair, duc taped and the chair
3:47
Speaker 4: turned over. His head was completely encircled in duct tape.
3:51
Speaker 4: She called the police. The police came, the man had suffocated.
3:55
Speaker 4: They removed the tape from and they found fingerprints on
3:59
Speaker 4: the inside the tape around the face, and there was
4:02
Speaker 4: another on the tape beside the leg to the chair,
4:07
Speaker 4: and they sent them off for identification, but there were
4:11
Speaker 4: no hits.
4:12
Speaker 1: There were eleven fingerprints, some of them only partial. There
4:16
Speaker 1: were also signs of blunt force trauma, but no implements
4:19
Speaker 1: were cataloged or found.
4:21
Speaker 4: And the house had been ransacked, but strangely, very little
4:27
Speaker 4: was missing. There was jewelry in his pocket and in
4:30
Speaker 4: the home, as well as money and guns.
4:33
Speaker 1: Perhaps something very specific was taken, but we're not sure what,
4:37
Speaker 1: if anything. There were also no eyewitnesses to potential intruders,
4:40
Speaker 1: so the police looked at the Bonner's landline for recent
4:43
Speaker 1: callers and found a number associated with the Bumpuses.
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Speaker 4: Carl Fields, I believe, was the lead investigator at the time,
4:51
Speaker 4: and he said that he saw that call number, they
4:54
Speaker 4: ran it and that it came back to Shirley Bumpus,
4:57
Speaker 4: which is the grandmother of Angel. So he went over
5:01
Speaker 4: there the next day to talk to the Bumpuses. And
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Speaker 4: he says that she told him she had gone over
5:09
Speaker 4: to the Bonner home to buy some marijuana.
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Speaker 1: It was no secret that the Bonners and Bumpuses knew
5:16
Speaker 1: each other. According to Angel's grandfather, Bayliss, he had even
5:20
Speaker 1: done odd jobs for the Bonners on occasions, so it
5:22
Speaker 1: wasn't strange that their number appeared on the Bonners call log.
5:26
Speaker 3: When we got the discovery the AT and T call log,
5:29
Speaker 3: it shows that my grandmother hadn't even called that day.
5:32
Speaker 3: So that's just something that they just were saying.
5:35
Speaker 4: But that's what got them on to the Bumpus household.
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Speaker 3: The previous district attorney, Neil Pinkston, he did not like
5:43
Speaker 3: my grandmamma, like they had history. Like he was also
5:46
Speaker 3: on the case of my uncle who was murdered. And
5:49
Speaker 3: that's how I know, like how victims are getting treated
5:52
Speaker 3: and how they were treating the victim of this case.
5:55
Speaker 3: They don't treat my family how they were treating the victim.
5:57
Speaker 3: So it's like my grandmother, she used to just be
5:59
Speaker 3: very very vocal about stuff, and so her and Pinkson
6:03
Speaker 3: they have a bad relationship. They was other suspects, but
6:07
Speaker 3: they didn't pursue them.
6:09
Speaker 4: They ruled them out.
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Speaker 1: I feel like I'm sensing there's a little facetiousness in there.
6:15
Speaker 4: A man who was doing a federal sentence, Nicholas Cheating,
6:18
Speaker 4: when he heard about the incident in Chattanooga. He was
6:22
Speaker 4: trying to get a time cut by cooperating with police
6:26
Speaker 4: in solving this homicide case and says, hey, I think
6:30
Speaker 4: I know who's responsible for this, and that's how they
6:34
Speaker 4: got hooked up with Mallory Vaughn. So the detective were
6:38
Speaker 4: down I believe they were down there twice and talked
6:40
Speaker 4: with him maybe three times. Never mentioned a young girl,
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Speaker 4: and the information that he gave was all on Mallory Vaughn.
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Speaker 1: But it appears that investigators didn't find nicholas cheating statement
6:53
Speaker 1: about Malory Vaughn credible. So this case went cold for
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Speaker 1: nine years, and in that time, Angel grew.
7:00
Speaker 3: I moved to Kentucky. During my junior year, graduated in
7:04
Speaker 3: high school. I was deciding if I was going to
7:07
Speaker 3: go to college or not. I actually was supposed to
7:11
Speaker 3: go to college in New York. I wanted to be
7:13
Speaker 3: a fashion designer and I was going to just go
7:16
Speaker 3: to New York and risk it or whatever. But I
7:20
Speaker 3: ended up getting pregnant, and I stayed and I ended
7:22
Speaker 3: up going to University of Louisville. I still didn't know
7:26
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do with my life now being
7:28
Speaker 3: a mother, and then eventually I became a single mother.
7:31
Speaker 5: Of two kids.
7:32
Speaker 3: So I decided that I was just going to go
7:36
Speaker 3: and get my nursing degree because my aunt has her
7:38
Speaker 3: nursing degree. I have a couple of cousins who have
7:40
Speaker 3: their nursing degree, and it just seemed like the most stable.
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Speaker 5: Career for me.
7:44
Speaker 3: And this is all still between like eighteen and twenty three,
7:48
Speaker 3: and so that was pretty much my life when she.
7:51
Speaker 1: Was about eighteen or nineteen years old. In twenty fourteen,
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Speaker 1: she got a traffic ticket.
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Speaker 3: I didn't really know about it, so I didn't pay it,
8:00
Speaker 3: and I had got a warrant from not showing up
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Speaker 3: to court. Like I didn't know that I could go
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Speaker 3: and redocate my case instead of turning myself in. I
8:07
Speaker 3: didn't know that, but I went down there. I just
8:09
Speaker 3: had to get built in. Ultimately, everything got dismissed in
8:14
Speaker 3: tank Care, but my fingerprints were inside of the system
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Speaker 3: from that.
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Speaker 1: So your prints are in the system in twenty fourteen,
8:20
Speaker 1: does anyone know why they decided, you know, to run
8:23
Speaker 1: the princes again through APHIS in twenty eighteen.
8:25
Speaker 3: If I remember from discovery that his granddaughter called and
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Speaker 3: wanted to see if they had any new evidence.
8:35
Speaker 1: APHIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification system marked angels prints as
8:40
Speaker 1: a potential match for two partial prints. I'd like to
8:44
Speaker 1: direct you to our coverage of fingerprint analysis on Junk Science.
8:48
Speaker 1: It'll be linked in the episode description, where we discuss
8:51
Speaker 1: how fingerprint analysis is subjective in nature, performed by flawed
8:55
Speaker 1: human beings on prints that are pulled from non uniform services.
9:00
Speaker 1: There is also disagreement among the analyst community as to
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Speaker 1: how many points of correlation need to line up between
9:06
Speaker 1: two prints in order to be considered a match. Again,
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Speaker 1: Angel's prints were flagged as a potential match to two
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Speaker 1: partial prints by APHIS, but then it was an analyst
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Speaker 1: who said that this print pulled from a material as
9:21
Speaker 1: elastic as duct tape, could be called a quote unquote match.
9:25
Speaker 4: Angel was pulled into this because of that fingerprint. That's
9:29
Speaker 4: truly the only piece of evidence that they had on her.
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Speaker 1: Additionally, her grandfather said that he had done odd jobs
9:38
Speaker 1: for the Bonners, and he later testified that the duct
9:40
Speaker 1: tape likely belonged to him, which is a plausible explanation,
9:43
Speaker 1: but coming from a loved one, it's easily explained away. Nevertheless,
9:48
Speaker 1: the fingerprint match that the partial print was enough for.
9:50
Speaker 3: An arrest warrant, and that was Joan of twenty eighteen.
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Speaker 3: They knocked on a door, opened the door, and I
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Speaker 3: mean and they were very hostile in their home and
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Speaker 3: their on their hips and stuff. They were asking me
10:02
Speaker 3: who's inside of the house, and I'm like, it's just
10:04
Speaker 3: me and my kids are sleeping. This was a Kentucky officer.
10:07
Speaker 3: He was like, well, can I search your house? And
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Speaker 3: I thought maybe they were looking for someone, and so
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Speaker 3: I allowed them to come in. All of a sudden,
10:14
Speaker 3: it's like teen officers and some detectives from Tennessee scattered
10:19
Speaker 3: inside of my apartment. They're not telling me why they're here.
10:23
Speaker 3: They're just telling me to get my kids somewhere if
10:25
Speaker 3: somebody can come pick up my kids. And they're like, oh, yeah,
10:28
Speaker 3: we have a warrant for you. So I just I
10:30
Speaker 3: get my aunt to come and get my kids, and
10:32
Speaker 3: I just leave with them. I was very naive about
10:35
Speaker 3: the legal system, and so I'm thinking this is a mistake,
10:39
Speaker 3: whatever it is, and I'm just going to bond out
10:41
Speaker 3: and be out in a couple hours. So I didn't
10:43
Speaker 3: think that I was going to be locked up for
10:45
Speaker 3: thirteen days.
10:47
Speaker 1: Angels age at the time of the crime thirteen and
10:51
Speaker 1: then her age at the time of arrest twenty three,
10:54
Speaker 1: presented the state with a challenge. This was technically a
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Speaker 1: juvenile case, but she couldn't be booked into juvenile facility
11:01
Speaker 1: at twenty three, so Angel had to wait in jail
11:03
Speaker 1: until her case was bound over into adult court before
11:07
Speaker 1: bonding out in preparation for trial. Meanwhile, it appears that
11:11
Speaker 1: after nine years of ignoring Nicholas Cheating as someone who'd
11:15
Speaker 1: say anything for a time cut, all of a sudden,
11:17
Speaker 1: his word is seen as credible enough to arrest Mallory Vaughan.
11:22
Speaker 3: The co defendant, asked for a speedy trial, and my
11:25
Speaker 3: attorneys would not get our trials separated, like they would
11:29
Speaker 3: not fight to get it separated for whatever reason.
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Speaker 1: And so now you've got a co defendant. That's how old.
11:35
Speaker 3: I believe he's older than my mom.
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Speaker 4: He was forty eight.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, he's like double my age.
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Speaker 1: So he was twenty eight when you were thirteen.
11:44
Speaker 5: Yeah.
11:45
Speaker 4: Uh, And he says he didn't know Angel Boppas, and
11:50
Speaker 4: Angel says she doesn't know him.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be really fucking weird if he knew her.
11:55
Speaker 4: Creepy, you know how they connected the two of.
11:57
Speaker 3: Them Facebook Facebook out on my profile. He was friends
12:01
Speaker 3: with a family member who was also older than me.
12:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it was a friend ten years later and
12:07
Speaker 4: I'm back when this occurred.
12:20
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Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts.
12:36
Speaker 4: Their theory in this case was that Angel came home
12:40
Speaker 4: from school, she went over to where Melory Vaughn stayed,
12:46
Speaker 4: and that there were trails through the woods that led
12:49
Speaker 4: to mister Botterer's home, and that they went down those
12:52
Speaker 4: trails and committed this act. Now, there's no proof of
12:56
Speaker 4: that whatsoever anywhere from anywhere else other than them saying it.
13:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, this prosecutor is a very active.
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Speaker 3: Imagination, definitely, because I lived across the highway, so even
13:09
Speaker 3: if it was I would still have to cross the
13:11
Speaker 3: busy highway to get there.
13:14
Speaker 1: So in addition, to dodging cars to cross a busy highway.
13:18
Speaker 1: There was a narrow window in which this could have
13:20
Speaker 1: even happened. Angel was at school until three pm, and
13:24
Speaker 1: Linda Bonner found her husband at five pm.
13:27
Speaker 5: My attorney.
13:28
Speaker 3: They hired a private investigator and he actually determined that
13:33
Speaker 3: I was at school. It shows that I wrote the boss,
13:36
Speaker 3: I don't have any absence on that day the timeframe,
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Speaker 3: I will have only had twenty minutes to commit the
13:42
Speaker 3: crime and get back home.
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Speaker 1: The trial began at the end of September twenty nineteen,
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Speaker 1: and to support this implausible narrative involving a five foot tall,
13:51
Speaker 1: eighty pound thirteen year old beating and duct taping an
13:55
Speaker 1: adult man to a chair, they had to give her
13:57
Speaker 1: an accomplice who was strong enough to do Franklin Bonner
14:01
Speaker 1: and maneuver his body around. So Nicholas Cheating took the
14:04
Speaker 1: stand to implicate Mallory Vaughan.
14:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, he just was saying the the co defendant, that
14:10
Speaker 3: he picked him up and he had money and he
14:13
Speaker 3: usually never has money, and he said that he told
14:16
Speaker 3: him that he did it, and something about a lottery man.
14:20
Speaker 4: He should have be going to hit a lick on
14:21
Speaker 4: the lottery man, and then he showed up the next
14:24
Speaker 4: day with money, and of.
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Speaker 1: Course this twenty eight year old called up his trusted
14:29
Speaker 1: thirteen year old partner in crime, who he found on Facebook,
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Speaker 1: to hit a lick on the lottery man. Cool story,
14:37
Speaker 1: I guess Nicholas Cheating recognized how ridiculous that sounded, so
14:41
Speaker 1: he denied ever hearing anything about Angel Bumpis, as in
14:44
Speaker 1: her co defendant. He denied knowing her at all, and
14:47
Speaker 1: perhaps in an attempt to make it seem more plausible,
14:49
Speaker 1: the state alluded to other potential accomplices.
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Speaker 3: The district attorneys, they just kept insinuating that the case
14:56
Speaker 3: was in closed and insinuating that more people were going
15:00
Speaker 3: to get arrested and more people were going to be
15:03
Speaker 3: punished for the crime. And I don't want to bash anybody,
15:06
Speaker 3: but the attorneys that I hired, they did not fight
15:09
Speaker 3: for me. There were no objections. They weren't even paying attention,
15:13
Speaker 3: Like one of the attorneys were just taxing the entire time.
15:16
Speaker 3: The other attorneys, she wasn't prepared. She was trying to
15:19
Speaker 3: write her closing statement, not listening. And then they didn't
15:23
Speaker 3: get pictures of me when I was thirteen, So like,
15:26
Speaker 3: it's literally a grown woman on trial, and I looked
15:28
Speaker 3: very different from when I was thirteen.
15:30
Speaker 1: Right, because the judge denied to admit your eighth grade
15:34
Speaker 1: graduation picture into evidence.
15:36
Speaker 3: And that's because those attorneys stay in properly put in
15:40
Speaker 3: the evidence in a timely manner.
15:42
Speaker 5: I really think that the jury was just confused.
15:46
Speaker 1: Or maybe they weren't. When the charges are aggravated robbery
15:49
Speaker 1: and felony murder with the specter of a larger group.
15:52
Speaker 1: They just needed to prove that she had some involvement
15:55
Speaker 1: in the actions that eventually led to mister Bonner's death.
15:58
Speaker 1: So they met that low ball with this partial fingerprint
16:02
Speaker 1: and without challenging if it even was her fingerprint. There
16:06
Speaker 1: was a plausible explanation offered by Angel's grandfather. Unfortunately, defendant's
16:11
Speaker 1: loved ones are typically easy to impeach or explain away.
16:15
Speaker 3: I knew that the district attorney had made their case,
16:18
Speaker 3: and like, while we were waiting for deliberation, we went
16:22
Speaker 3: to this bar. The attorneys they all got drinks and
16:25
Speaker 3: they're like, oh, Angel, get a drink. And then like
16:28
Speaker 3: the female she asked me, She's like, do you want
16:31
Speaker 3: to get in the car, and just go to Mexico,
16:33
Speaker 3: and like, I don't know if she was joking or not,
16:36
Speaker 3: but like in that moment, my heart dropped and I.
16:38
Speaker 5: Just felt like I'll often to be found guilty.
16:41
Speaker 3: And they also told me that if the co defendant
16:44
Speaker 3: was found not guilty, then I will be found not guilty.
16:48
Speaker 5: So they read his verdict first.
16:50
Speaker 3: And it's not guilty, so I have a little bit
16:53
Speaker 3: of hope. But then I get guilty. So I went
17:11
Speaker 3: to Silverdale and then I went to Tennessee Prison for Women.
17:16
Speaker 3: I got written up on my first day because I
17:19
Speaker 3: refused medical things. And it's just like I guess back then,
17:24
Speaker 3: I just wanted to hold on to whatever rights that
17:26
Speaker 3: I did have, and I knew that I didn't have
17:28
Speaker 3: to do anything medical because they couln't force medical stuff
17:32
Speaker 3: on you even if you're a prisoner.
17:34
Speaker 5: And yeah, so they wrote me up.
17:36
Speaker 3: I went to segregation for forty days upon arrival, very
17:41
Speaker 3: tough time. Couldn't use the phone, couldn't write letters, couldn't
17:44
Speaker 3: do anything. Then I got out and I would just
17:47
Speaker 3: call home a lot. Because it's also happened during COVID,
17:49
Speaker 3: so there was no visits or anything like that.
17:52
Speaker 1: Now, how old were your two little ones at.
17:55
Speaker 3: The time, they had just turned five and four.
17:59
Speaker 1: Jeezus, that really sucks.
18:01
Speaker 5: It was.
18:02
Speaker 3: It was very traumatic experience going to prison. Like I
18:05
Speaker 3: literally don't know how people do that. I mean I
18:08
Speaker 3: did it, but like I can see how people like
18:11
Speaker 3: they go insane, they start using drugs and just all
18:15
Speaker 3: of that, because that's all you see in prison is
18:17
Speaker 3: drug use and just a lot of stuff. Guards doing stuff,
18:21
Speaker 3: they shit in and it's sad. But I had a
18:25
Speaker 3: lot of support, not only for my family, but from
18:27
Speaker 3: millions of people all over the world.
18:29
Speaker 1: Well, Angel was being prosecuted. An e crime docuseries Accused
18:34
Speaker 1: Guilty or Innocent picked up on the story, and the
18:36
Speaker 1: coverage garnered a great deal of support for Angel. Meanwhile,
18:40
Speaker 1: the sentence she was given, considering all the strides that
18:43
Speaker 1: had been made over the previous two decades around life
18:46
Speaker 1: sentences for juveniles amounting to cruel and unusual punishment, it
18:50
Speaker 1: appeared that Angel's situation might have been unconstitutional.
18:55
Speaker 3: Oh you had sixty years because it was two felony,
18:57
Speaker 3: so you automatically get a life sentence.
19:00
Speaker 1: I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, But if they
19:02
Speaker 1: believe themselves, this is a crime that was committed when
19:06
Speaker 1: she was thirteen, and by twenty eighteen, the Supreme Court
19:09
Speaker 1: had already ruled mandatory life sentences for juveniles unconstitutional.
19:14
Speaker 4: Well, there's been a case recently that laid out the
19:17
Speaker 4: law here for Tennessee. It said, I mean, I know
19:19
Speaker 4: the Eighth Amendment. You can't sen uce a juvenile to
19:22
Speaker 4: life and not take into account the maturity that they
19:25
Speaker 4: had at the time of the offense, or any of
19:28
Speaker 4: their upbringing or anything like that. You can't foreclose the
19:34
Speaker 4: future on a juvenile like that. And so they said,
19:38
Speaker 4: you know, at twenty five years, then you've got to
19:41
Speaker 4: be able to look and see if they've engaged in
19:44
Speaker 4: rehabilitative efforts. But the parole board can make that decision, and.
19:50
Speaker 1: We know that parole boards are typically filled with political appointees,
19:53
Speaker 1: so it's hard to know if we can count on
19:55
Speaker 1: that protocol. Either way, she was re sentenced the first
19:59
Speaker 1: in a series of victories that happened, I believe, quicker
20:02
Speaker 1: than any case we've ever covered. You know, that's not
20:04
Speaker 1: to say that four years is somehow nothing. Just take
20:08
Speaker 1: a second to think about the length of one month
20:11
Speaker 1: or one year. I mean, would you accept being kidnapped
20:15
Speaker 1: away from your life, your children, your loved ones for
20:19
Speaker 1: any amount of time. So we can only be grateful
20:22
Speaker 1: that this injustice was undone with the urgency that all
20:25
Speaker 1: innocent people deserve.
20:26
Speaker 4: So Angela had hired me then to tried to get
20:29
Speaker 4: her a new trial. The judge allowed me to come
20:32
Speaker 4: into the case. We ordered transcripts, and prior council got
20:36
Speaker 4: me their files, and we went to work.
20:39
Speaker 1: Bill was able to point out multiple errors in Angel's trial,
20:42
Speaker 1: outlining ineffective assistance of council claims and constitutional violations. Judge
20:47
Speaker 1: Tom Greenholtz noted that Angel's eighth grade yearbook photos should
20:51
Speaker 1: not have been excluded from evidence, that her council failed
20:54
Speaker 1: to not only admit it in a timely fashion, but
20:56
Speaker 1: also failed to object to the ten years too late
20:59
Speaker 1: Facebook between angels relative and Mallory Vaughan, as well as
21:03
Speaker 1: to the specter of this larger group alleged to have
21:06
Speaker 1: been involved with the crime, among so many others. Greenholts
21:09
Speaker 1: finally ruled that the evidence was insufficient to establish that
21:12
Speaker 1: a robbery had even been committed, and without the robbery,
21:16
Speaker 1: there's no felony murder. They'd have to prove that she
21:18
Speaker 1: did it, and the theory was literally that this eighty
21:21
Speaker 1: pound thirteen year old could not have physically committed this
21:24
Speaker 1: crime without extensive help.
21:27
Speaker 4: After the judge ruled in our favor, the next thing
21:29
Speaker 4: we did was asked for a bond. The judge was
21:32
Speaker 4: not going to approve the source of income until the
21:36
Speaker 4: entire amount of premium was paid on the bond, which
21:40
Speaker 4: was going to be the following week, and so we
21:42
Speaker 4: had really been anticipating Angel getting out. I know she was,
21:47
Speaker 4: and we were very disappointed. But about that time I
21:50
Speaker 4: felt a tug on my jacket and I turned around
21:53
Speaker 4: and it was the bonds lady and she said, Bill,
21:57
Speaker 4: there is a gentleman in the back there wants to
22:00
Speaker 4: talk with you. So I said, judge, would you excuse
22:02
Speaker 4: me just a moment. She said sure. I went back
22:05
Speaker 4: and he said I want to make her bond. Said, well, great,
22:08
Speaker 4: why are you doing this? And he said, I'll follow
22:11
Speaker 4: this case is that started, and I believe she is
22:13
Speaker 4: probably not guilty. So I asked him some other questions
22:16
Speaker 4: about his source of income and his business and raised
22:20
Speaker 4: my hand and said, judge will have one more witness,
22:22
Speaker 4: and he was kind enough to make that premium.
22:25
Speaker 5: No, I cried.
22:26
Speaker 3: I was really wanting to get out and see my kids,
22:29
Speaker 3: and so I was just very grateful.
22:30
Speaker 1: That's got to be incredibly emotionally confusing. I mean, you
22:34
Speaker 1: got this positive outcome with this generous gesture, but it's
22:39
Speaker 1: only positive in the undoing of this evil right Anyway,
22:45
Speaker 1: You get home and you know, you probably squeeze those
22:48
Speaker 1: kids so tight their heads nearly popped off.
22:50
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was.
22:51
Speaker 3: That was a little difficult too, with their gay. Even now,
22:55
Speaker 3: we are still going back and forth in court with
22:58
Speaker 3: like custody and visits, and it's a lot that has
23:02
Speaker 3: transpired in my wife. I still just have to deal
23:05
Speaker 3: with the mass regardless.
23:06
Speaker 1: And even though Angel was out, this was not over yet.
23:09
Speaker 1: But at least with a newly elected district Attorney, Cody Womp,
23:14
Speaker 1: they were no longer fighting the same folks who had
23:16
Speaker 1: followed through with this absurd prosecution.
23:19
Speaker 4: I talked with the prosecutors and they believed, I think
23:24
Speaker 4: that Angel was not, in their view, the primary perpetrator
23:30
Speaker 4: of this offense, and they thought because of the fingerprint
23:33
Speaker 4: that she may have been present, but they wanted to
23:35
Speaker 4: know who is responsible and essentially tell them and we'll
23:41
Speaker 4: move you to go home. And so I go to Angel,
23:44
Speaker 4: who's always told me I don't know anything about this.
23:47
Speaker 4: I didn't do this. But I go to her. She
23:50
Speaker 4: swelled up and said, mister Massey, I do not know
23:54
Speaker 4: what happened that day. I was not there. And so
23:59
Speaker 4: at that point we had to explain how those fingerprints
24:03
Speaker 4: got there, or at least neuter that evidence in some way.
24:07
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier, fingerprint analysis has come under scrutiny
24:11
Speaker 1: on a few fronts, but most importantly, as in this case,
24:15
Speaker 1: fingerprint analysts are often dealing with partial prints from non
24:19
Speaker 1: uniform or uneven surfaces, and there's a disagreement in that
24:22
Speaker 1: community about how many points of correlation between fingerprints constitute
24:26
Speaker 1: a match. Is it twelve or twenty? I mean, raise
24:30
Speaker 1: your hand. If you thought that it had to be
24:31
Speaker 1: the whole thing, then you have to consider the surface.
24:33
Speaker 1: Was it elastic? Did it ben some aspect of the
24:36
Speaker 1: print that you're trying to match. But even under the
24:38
Speaker 1: most reliable conditions, you also must prove that the print
24:41
Speaker 1: didn't enter the scene innocently, as Angel's grandfather contended a trial.
24:46
Speaker 1: And so, with this ongoing discussion around the reliability of fingerprints.
24:50
Speaker 1: Bill found additional support for Angel's innocence.
24:53
Speaker 4: That's when I arranged for her to take this enhanced
24:57
Speaker 4: polygraph that's available now to cycle physiological detection of deception examination.
25:04
Speaker 4: I believe it said between ninety two and ninety seven
25:06
Speaker 4: percent accurate, and the first one she took she did
25:10
Speaker 4: great on. I gave it to the prosecutors, but they
25:13
Speaker 4: wanted a law enforcement examination and I was told there
25:18
Speaker 4: weren't enough questions asked on this examination. I said, the
25:22
Speaker 4: polygraph strength is in the brevity of the questions. It's
25:26
Speaker 4: a single issue polygraph. That's what makes it so reliable.
25:30
Speaker 4: That's the reason the National Security Agency uses it, dea
25:35
Speaker 4: Department of Defense uses it. But they wanted a law
25:39
Speaker 4: enforcement polygraph. So we then went and found a second
25:43
Speaker 4: polygraph expert who had a background with law enforcement, had
25:49
Speaker 4: a wonderful resume, and he called me right after it
25:53
Speaker 4: was over and he said, Bill, you've got to have
25:56
Speaker 4: four points to show that you're not being deceptive. He said,
26:00
Speaker 4: she had fourteen. This lady's telling the truth. I said, well,
26:05
Speaker 4: you put that into your report. He said absolutely. So
26:08
Speaker 4: we took that down then to Miss Womp and when
26:11
Speaker 4: she saw that, she had her people look at her
26:15
Speaker 4: TBI experts look at the examination that was given, and
26:18
Speaker 4: they verified that it was an accurate test. And that's
26:22
Speaker 4: when they agreed to dismiss the charges.
26:25
Speaker 1: You know, when I was reading initially about this case,
26:28
Speaker 1: my first impression was, at this point, it looks like
26:31
Speaker 1: they were, you know, looking for some way to save
26:33
Speaker 1: face for the office and you know, as well as
26:35
Speaker 1: do the right thing.
26:36
Speaker 4: Well, what did to give them that reason?
26:38
Speaker 1: So the district attorney joined you and Judge A Man
26:42
Speaker 1: had done agreed. The charges were dismissed in August twenty
26:46
Speaker 1: twenty three.
26:47
Speaker 4: Right, it was wonderful seeing the look on Angel's face
26:50
Speaker 4: when that dismissal was announced. I hadn't seen that deep
26:55
Speaker 4: of a smile in quite a while. You practice your
26:58
Speaker 4: whole life hoping for a moment that good stuff.
27:02
Speaker 1: So, Angel, the kids, how old are they now?
27:05
Speaker 5: Ten and nine? It's their birthday night?
27:07
Speaker 1: Yep, ten and nine years. You've still got some formative
27:11
Speaker 1: years left. But where are you all living now?
27:13
Speaker 3: I love back in Louisville, Kentucky. So I'm trying to
27:16
Speaker 3: co parent with their dad. Like I said earlier, that's
27:20
Speaker 3: just it's been very difficult, and a lot of stuff
27:23
Speaker 3: that happened wouldn't have happened if I went to a prison.
27:26
Speaker 3: But I am back inside of nursing school. I got
27:28
Speaker 3: a year and a half and I'm going straight for
27:30
Speaker 3: the registered nurse and I have my PSN inside of it.
27:34
Speaker 3: So I just got a year and a half of
27:35
Speaker 3: that during that time. Like, I'm also a licensed as
27:37
Speaker 3: a titian, so I'm kind of going to do something
27:39
Speaker 3: with like medical spot after I get my degree.
27:42
Speaker 1: That's great. Anything else that you're working on, you know,
27:44
Speaker 1: something you'd like to bring our attention to.
27:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have wrote a book because when I was
27:49
Speaker 3: locked up, I used to journal like every day. I
27:52
Speaker 3: got notebooks and notebooks of stuff that happened every single day.
27:57
Speaker 5: Like I remember, people used to be like she's always writing.
28:01
Speaker 5: What is she writing? Like is she trying to tell
28:03
Speaker 5: on us?
28:03
Speaker 3: Because I would literally document everything that I saw, everything
28:07
Speaker 3: that happened, like I had.
28:09
Speaker 5: I got all stacks of it.
28:11
Speaker 3: And I'm currently going back and forth for different publishers
28:14
Speaker 3: just to like fully detail get out my story. And
28:18
Speaker 3: I really hope that inspires people, as people have wrote
28:22
Speaker 3: me and told me that I have inspired them, and
28:24
Speaker 3: I just want to get that bit of hope on
28:27
Speaker 3: paper to people to have forever and I can just
28:30
Speaker 3: finally close that chapter of my life and just to
28:33
Speaker 3: move on.
28:34
Speaker 4: Would you send me an autographed copy?
28:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we've linked her socials in the episode description,
28:42
Speaker 1: so if anyone would like to reach out and you know,
28:44
Speaker 1: potentially assist in the publishing process, please do so. And
28:47
Speaker 1: with that we'll go to closing arguments, where I'm just
28:50
Speaker 1: gonna thank you both for joining us today, and then
28:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to lean back and lock it up as
28:54
Speaker 1: they share their closing thoughts.
28:56
Speaker 4: BILP closing thoughts are while something like this that Angel
29:04
Speaker 4: got the experience, both the bad and the good. It's
29:07
Speaker 4: rare to see it, but it happens far more than
29:12
Speaker 4: we see. It happens far more than we see. Sometimes
29:16
Speaker 4: it's the wrong person, they weren't there, just like it
29:19
Speaker 4: wasn't Angel's case. And sometimes it's just simply overcharging. We
29:24
Speaker 4: applaud the work that the Edocence Project does and the
29:28
Speaker 4: Wrongful Conviction Group. It's a labor of love, isn't it.
29:31
Speaker 4: It's a labor of love.
29:33
Speaker 5: Yeah.
29:34
Speaker 3: I just hope that one day the Juvenile laws will
29:39
Speaker 3: be better, especially for my case, because I personally don't
29:43
Speaker 3: agree with anybody under eighteen spend it sixty years in prison.
29:49
Speaker 3: I hope that one day people can like relook into
29:52
Speaker 3: laws because I do feel like crimes are not black
29:55
Speaker 3: and white, like it's more stuff that goes into it.
29:59
Speaker 3: I've been around women who are there because of a boyfriend,
30:03
Speaker 3: you know, and just because they didn't want to say anything,
30:06
Speaker 3: then they got twenty thirty years sitting. Can't get out
30:09
Speaker 3: because I can't afford to get an appeal attorney or
30:12
Speaker 3: anything like that. And I just hope one day more
30:16
Speaker 3: district attorneys and police officers get a little more accountability
30:21
Speaker 3: so mistakes won't happen. Because anytime a mistake this happened,
30:25
Speaker 3: you know, it was just they were just doing their job,
30:28
Speaker 3: so nothing can be done about it.
30:37
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Wrong for Conviction. You can
30:40
Speaker 2: listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts
30:42
Speaker 2: one week early and ed free by subscribing to Lava
30:45
Speaker 2: for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank
30:48
Speaker 2: our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well
30:52
Speaker 2: as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler Kevin Wartis and
30:55
Speaker 2: Jeff Clibern. The music in this production was supplied by
30:58
Speaker 2: three time OSCAR nominated composer Ralph Be sure to follow
31:01
Speaker 2: us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good
31:04
Speaker 2: and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on
31:07
Speaker 2: Instagram at it's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production
31:11
Speaker 2: of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
31:14
Speaker 2: Number one