A judge in Tennessee has dismissed charges against a Chattanooga woman who was convicted in 2019 of murdering a man 10 years earlier – when she was just 13 years old.

Hamilton County Judge Amanda Dunn on Tuesday dismissed first-degree murder and aggravated robbery convictions for Angel Bumpass, now 28 and a mother of two who was preparing to enter nursing school when she was arrested in 2018. She was convicted in 2019 of murdering Franklin Bonner, who was found tied to a table and chair in his home, apparently murdered during a robbery attempt.

“A conviction does not always mean justice,” Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp said after the charges were dismissed, according to the Associated Press. “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 arrested for Bonner’s murder, after his cousin – who was in federal prison for a bank robbery – claimed Vaughn had admitted to burglarizing Bonner’s home and binding the victim. 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 sexually harassing a rape victim, tampering with evidence, and gross misconduct. The charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence.

Both Mallory Vaughn and Angel Bumpass said they didn’t know each other, yet they were tried together. The prosecution alleged that Angel’s fingerprints could only have been found on the duct tape if she was there when Bonner was killed; the defense argued that nine other fingerprints were also found on the duct tape and that Angel had been in school the day of the crime.

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 said law enforcement would continue searching for the 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.”

Washington & Lee University, initially named Augusta Academy, then Liberty Hall Academy before being renamed for America’s first president George Washington and Confederate General Robert E. Lee, has removed the plaque honoring Lee’s famed steed Traveller.

The plaque was mounted over Traveller’s gravesite outside Lee Chapel, which is a National Historic Landmark. It read, “The last home of Traveller. Through war and peace the faithful, devoted and beloved horse of General Robert Lee. Placed by the Virginia Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy.” Last month, the university removed plaques from the room where Lee took his oath of office when he was inaugurated as president of the school in 1865 and his office from 1865-68.

"and the horse you rode in on." It appears that Washington and Lee University is not only cancelling Lee but even his horse. https://t.co/CyWXu5uhzy Traveler was originally put down for untreatable tetanus but will now be put down again by equally untreatable cancel culture.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 8, 2023

“Traveller was a beloved part of the campus story,” Kamron Spivey, president of Students for Historical Preservation, told The College Fix. “People like to hear tales about animals because they do no wrong. That is how Traveller has been immortalized in campus history. He was a faithful horse whose beauty and loyalty Robert E. Lee said would inspire poets. Until this month, very few people seemed bothered by the horse.”

“Due to a misappreciation of Lee’s contributions and positive legacy as an educator, university officials think any reference to the man is detracting from student enrollment. Rather than confront the issue directly, they are trying to secretly hide their history from the world,” Spivey continued. “The university should keep the original markers. If the goal is to contextualize a historic site, there is no better place than the original location they were erected.”

Augusta Academy was founded in 1749 and moved several times before being renamed Liberty Hall Academy in 1776 as a tribute to the American revolutionaries. By 1796 the school was having financial trouble; U.S. President George Washington donated 100 shares of James River Canal Company stock — a huge donation at the time — which he had received as a gift from the Virginia General Assembly for recognition of his service to Virginia. It still contributes to the university’s operating budget.

The grateful trustees changed the name of the institution to Washington Academy. Washington responded, “To promote Literature in this rising Empire, and to encourage the Arts, have ever been among the warmest wishes of my heart.” In 1813, Washington Academy became Washington College.

Four months after Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, the Washington College board of trustees invited Lee to become president of the college. Over the next five years, Lee “incorporated the local law school; instituted undergraduate courses in business and journalism; introduced modern languages and applied mathematics; and expanded offerings in the natural sciences,” the university’s website states, adding, “Lee also endorsed a lasting tradition of student self-governance, putting the students in charge of the honor system that the faculty had previously overseen.”

After his death in 1870, the faculty asked for the college to be renamed in Lee’s honor, thus creating Washington and Lee University.

The University’s Board of Trustees wrote in 2021, “Our community holds passionate and divergent opinions about our name. The association with our namesakes can be painful to those who continue to experience racism, especially to African Americans, and is seen by some as an impediment to our efforts to attract and support a diverse community. For others, our name is an appropriate recognition of the specific and significant contributions each man made directly to our institution.”