#580 Jason Flom with Anthony Apanovitch

**Connor Hall** (0:04)
Hi, it's Connor Hall, Senior Producer for Wrongful Conviction with another case update and behind the scenes insights. This one, I'll never forget, Tony Apanovitch, Ohio, death penalty case. After this came out, they ended up putting them in the hole. I felt terrible about it. We don't ever want to do harm. That's like our number one guiding light here is we do no harm. That was harm that we did. Of course, I reached out to his attorney, Dale Bache, and he was like, Tony said he'd do it again anyway. He said, since then, life has been better in there because some of the guards, that they treat them a little bit better, which I guess any kind of positive is welcome when you're on death row. Another guiding principle that we have here is, if we can help, we will help. How much help are we actually delivering here? Just a podcast, right? But I wish other people had that as their guiding light. Presidents and governors, if you'd listen to the one we did about Billy Allen a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about pardon powers and I made the plea to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who is known to be against the death penalty. There's been an unofficial moratorium on carrying out the death penalty during his term. So I made a plea that he please act in his final months in office to make that moratorium official somehow. That was June 4th and just 12 days later, I credit myself of course. I hope that's stripping with the intended sarcasm, but my plea was answered. In part, Governor DeWine made a statement calling on state legislators to abolish the death penalty. His reasoning, he says that he believes that it does nothing to deter these kinds of crimes. That's the only reason, right? But my plea has more to do with how little confidence our legal system and those who operate it inspire. We've covered tons of innocence cases out of Ohio. Alexis Martin, Ruel Saylor, Ricardo Gray, Marcus Blaylock, David Thorne, Ashante and William Smith, David Smith, Chris Smith, Al Cleveland, Evan King, Dean Gillespie, Raymond Allen Warren, Robert McClendon, Louis Castillo Jr., Eric Mish, Isaiah Andrews. While we didn't cover Isaiah Andrews, he passed away before we got a chance to. But there's so many people out of Ohio. Kevin Keith, Gary Beeman, Dwayne Brooks, Derrick Jameson, Chris Miller, Marcus Sapp.
I mean, Jesus, when you go to the Innocence Network Conference, half the people there are from like Ohio and Illinois. And that might be just because, you know, there's so many pro bono lawyers to go around there. And there are in other places who have just as many problems. And then you think about all the states that still have an operational death row and how many of the people must be innocent. I mean, Jason often asks death penalty supporters, how many innocent people are you willing to kill to keep this thing going? Are you willing to be that sacrifice so that we can all feel tough on crime? In Ohio alone, death row cases, we've covered Joe D'Ambrosio, Elwood Jones, Ricky Jackson, Kwame Ajamu, Wiley Bridgman, all of whom are now free. And then there's so many more that still remain there that we know about, right? Tyrone Knowling, Jeffrey Woganstall, Keith Lamar, Tony Apanovitch.
And knowing that I, a civilian, I can rattle off nine people from Ohio's death row knowing that in all likelihood there are more. Wouldn't it seem necessary to just commute all these prisoners off death row to life in prison if that's as far as you're willing to go, right? I mean, what if one of these innocent people on death row was a friend or a family member? What if it was you? Would you be willing to be that sacrifice? I want you to think about this when you're listening to Tony Apanovitch's story.
It was in 1984, rape and murder. The state's known for decades that DNA testing of the crime scene evidence exonerates Tony.
Yet, they first tried to hide it from him. Then, they fought to keep it from being used in court. And when it was finally presented, showing two unknown male profiles, Tony was finally set free in 2016
But the state appealed that decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, arguing that, well, he didn't order the DNA testing. He didn't request it. That's the post-conviction DNA testing statute, that it has to be requested by the defendant, not the state. He can't use that. So he was taken back to prison, back to death row in 2018 That's our system operating as it was designed, or as it was amended along the way.