Powhattan Correctional Center
His name is James M. Bullock and his home has been Powhattan Corrction Center for the last 16 years. He has been in prison since 1982; doing a total sentence of 154 years for robberies and maliscious wounding and gun possession. All this time, he has been thinking and preparing himself for the return to society, as an abiding member of society. Doing his stay there, he has become a model prisoner knowing that it would help him get out sooner.
"I can never change the past, I hold regrets, sorry, and pain for my actions as long as I live. Things began to look good for me in 1998. I began ordering copies of my medical records to take with me home. All of this was then presented to the parole board, all of my certificates, letters, and awards that I had earned and worked hard for over the past years. Yet this time, no decision was med from the board and finally in August of '98 they came to their decision: "denial" and that I had to wait another year for another trial. I received another letter later stamped "Legal Update" from Richmond and in it the words stated that a mistake had been corrected. The corrections was as follows that I would not go before the parole board until the year 2040.
All these years of hope and striving to be the best I could be, allowing me to hold on to the fact that one day I would be released...gone, all gone...and my question to you is...can they do this to me? I have spent a quarter of my life in prison and do not want to die here. I have never killed anyone, stabbed anyone; my crimes were burglary and robbery. I was not given life in prison, nor was I given a death sentence...yet somehow I ended up with one."
Innocents on Death Row Watch:
ANTHONY APANOVITCH
Tony Apanovitch has been sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. He is a victim of the most serious miscarriage of justice. By the time the federal courts decide whether to even address the merits of Apanovitch's allegations that the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor and Cleveland Police Department witheld exculpatory evidence and misled the court, Apanovitch will have been incarcerated for more than 15 years in jails and prisons in Ohio. He has spent most of that time on death row, where he is today among the segregated and isolated prisoners at the Mansfield Correctional Institiution.
Anthony Apanovitch was convicted in Cleveland, Ohio for the August, 1984, murder and rape of Mary Ann Flynn. After a two month investigation, law enforcement targeted Apanovitch, even though the hair, blood, and saliva samples he volunarily provided excluded him as a suspect. The state's case at trial was built solely on circumstantial evidence.
In 1993, Apanovitch obtained portions of the Cleveland Police Department investigate file under the Ohio Public Records Act. Documents from that file, as well as information withheld by the Cuyahoga County Coroner, greatly undermines the jury verdict and raises seroius doubt that Aponovitch committed the rape and murder.
After the Ohio courts summarily dismissed Aponovitch's challenges, he presented his claims to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. Aponovitch's request for an evidentiary hearing in the federal district court, or full briefing in the federal appeals court, has been pending since February, 1997.