After medical delay, manslaughter convict will go to jail

By Chris Dumond

(434) 385-5531

RUSTBURG — Angela Moon has not served a day of her three-year prison sentence since her 2006 conviction for manslaughter in the death of her husband.

Chronic medical problems have kept her out of jail, but with no hope that the woman’s health will improve, Campbell County Circuit Court Judge Samuel Johnston ruled Tuesday that Moon will have to go to jail on July 1.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Johnston said.

In November 2006, Moon, 29, of Rustburg, was convicted of the April 2006 manslaughter in the stabbing death of her husband, Donald Kevin Moon. Donald Moon was 35.

Angela Moon claimed she acted in self defense in the slaying and that her husband stabbed her in the head before she took the knife away and stabbed him in the side. During the trial, witnesses, including Moon’s mother, testified there had been a long history of squabbling between the two.

The woman’s emergency room physician, however, testified the knife wound to her head was superficial and not consistent with an intentional stabbing.

When Angela Moon was sentenced in February 2007, she was allowed to report in July in order to take care of numerous health problems, but according to Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Brooke Willse-Gaddy, Moon never reported.

The woman’s extensive health problems, including hip-replacement surgery and digestive and mental-health problems have kept her on an extended furlough.

She appeared in court in January on a stretcher for an extension. She appeared in a wheelchair Tuesday.

Dr. Susan Hundley of Hurt, one of four doctors who testified on Moon’s behalf Tuesday, told the court she has been Angela Moon’s doctor for eight years.

Hundley said Moon has degenerative hip disease, diabetes, pancreatitis, Crohn’s disease and multiple ongoing psychiatric disorders.

“She frequently requires hospitalization,” Hundley testified.

The doctor said she was fearful that local jails, where Moon might have to stay before being taken to a state prison, would not be able to provide adequate care.

Lt. Hilson Atkins, the assistant site administrator at the Campbell County Adult Detention Center, testified the Rustburg jail would not be able to provide the level of care her doctors believes that she needs.

Atkins, who also worked at the Lynchburg jail, part of the same Blue Ridge Regional Jail system, testified that Moon could be cared for there in the short term, but would need to be transported to a Virginia Department of Corrections prison for the kind of medical attention she required.

Moon’s lawyer, Ghislane Storr Burks of Fredericksburg, argued that neither the judge, local jailers nor the commonwealth’s attorney’s office could force the state to quickly transfer the woman to the state prison.

Burks told the judge that based on her research, transfer from local jails to a state prison can take as long as a year.

Although the judge agreed that the woman’s health problems were serious, calling her a “walking medical nightmare,” he said it was time for her to go to prison.

He ordered the department of corrections to pick her up from the Lynchburg jail within 30 days, an order Burks contended could not be enforced.