Fighting the death penalty
By SARA KINCAID
Sun Staff Reporter
10/26/2004


Jill Torrance/Arizona Daily Sun Juan Melendez speaks at Ashurst Auditorium at NAU Monday evening. Melendez was on death row in Florida despite his innonence for over 17 years when he was finally released and now speaks out against capital punishment. To order this photo, go to http://photos.azdailysun.com
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Juan Melendez-Colon was scared the day he went to Florida's death row.

Almost 18 years later, he was finally released from prison for the crimes he did not commit: murder and robbery.

A court upheld his conviction three times based on the testimony of two witnesses, even though in the prosecutor's files was a tape with a confession by the person who deserved to be where Melendez-Colon was for 17 years, eight months and a day.

But death row is not where he would wish the person who actually did the crime. Melendez-Colon is an advocate to overturn the death penalty. After he spoke of his experience to a full house in Ashurst Auditorium at Northern Arizona University Monday night, he asked the audience to get involved in organization that are against the death penalty and to contact lawmakers and politicians and ask them to change the law to not allow the death penalty.

"The problem with the death penalty is they don't have all the details," he said.

Melendez-Colon was at NAU to speak about his experience as part of the Northern Arizona Justice Project. His talk was sponsored by the justice project and the NAU department of criminal justice.

In his case, there was the absence of the confession by the person who did it.

Instead, the prosecutor relied on the testimony of a man who was a police informant and the other was a man who was incriminated in the crime.

Melendez-Colon had an alibi witness and people to corroborate his story, to no avail, because their credibility was questioned in court, he said.

In addition to speaking about how he came to be sentenced for a crime he did not commit, Melendez-Colon described what life was like on Death Row.

"When they killed the third person (after he was there), I was super scared," Melendez-Colon said. "I thought they killed people every week."

But sometimes it wasn't the electric chair that killed the inmates on death row. Some took their own lives through the fashioning of a noose out of a garbage bag. After 10 years on death row, Melendez-Colon bought a garbage bag for four stamps that the runner could use to buy cigarettes. He made his noose, but before he slipped it around his neck, he took some time to think about it. And he slept on it awhile.

He had a dream that reminded him of his childhood in Puerto Rico and it convinced him not to go through with it, he said.

"They would say you are dead, but you are free," Melendez-Colon said about committing suicide. "Why give them the satisfaction?"

It would be almost eight more years before he would be free.

"I was not saved by the system, but in spite of the system," he said.

His lawyer quit on him, but he was assigned a new team of lawyers. He had one appeal left. One of the prosecutors had become a judge during this time and this created a conflict of interest, so his case was moved to a new jurisdiction.

It was during this transition of legal representation that the tape was found. The tape was in the hands of prosecution one month before his original trial. It was in a box of files of his original lawyer as well.

The appeal was won and a new trial was ordered. The state, however, dismissed the case against Melendez-Colon.

Now Melendez-Colon goes across the country speaking to people about his experience in hopes of raising awareness about wrongful conviction and the death penalty.

The Northern Arizona Justice Project will be brining in the 100th freed death row inmate in the spring. This person is from Arizona.

The justice project is a student group working to help people who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime.

Reporter Sara Kincaid can be reached at 556-2250 or skincaid@azdailysun.com.
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