Juan Roberto Melendez Colon

Dee · **Posted:** Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:27 pm

Survivor calls capital punishment 'madness'
He urges people to get involved in the movement to abolish it

By Pamela Manson
The Salt Lake Tribune

Two numbers have dominated Juan Roberto Melendez Colon's life in the past few decades.
The first is 8-046466, his inmate number during the nearly 18 years he spent on Florida's death row.
The second is 99, his ranking among condemned prisoners nationwide who have been exonerated and released since capital punishment was reinstated in 1973.
"When it [his case] first started, I was naive to the law," Melendez said Tuesday about the 1984 arrest that started his journey through the justice system. "I thought when I was done with the process, I would be let go.
"I was wrong."
Convicted for a murder he insisted he hadn't committed, Melendez sat in a cell for the next 17 years, eight months and one day, while the Florida Supreme Court rejected three appeals. Finally a judge ruled he deserved a new trial and prosecutors decided to drop the case.
Since his release from the Florida State Prison on Jan. 3, 2002, Melendez, 53, has traveled the nation to speak out against capital punishment. In Utah this week, Melendez said the system of imposing the death penalty is flawed beyond repair.
"Once you are indicted with a grand jury, there is no turning back," Melendez told The Salt Lake Tribune a few hours before he spoke at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah.
Judi Caruso, a New Mexico attorney and human rights activist who also spoke at the university, said that Melendez's experience is not unusual.
"The death penalty system is error-prone," Caruso said.
Melendez, a migrant worker who grew up in Puerto Rico and spoke little English at the time, was convicted of the 1983 murder of Delbert Baker, a cosmetology school owner. He claims prosecutors targeted him after cutting deals with two acquaintances, including a now-deceased man believed to be the real killer.
After years of being ignored by the courts, a new lawyer took over Melendez's appeals and discovered a cassette tape with incriminating statements by the real killer at the trial attorney's office. That tape, along with other favorable evidence, was turned over to Judge Barbara Fleisher, who struck down the conviction in December 2001.
Fleisher said the prosecutor had withheld crucial evidence that substantiated Melendez's claim of innocence. The state, without acknowledging any wrongdoing, declined to retry the case.
"If I would have lost this appeal, I wouldn't have lasted long," Melendez said.
He captivated his audience Tuesday night with his dramatic story of being convicted of first-degree murder and armed robbery despite having an alibi backed by four witnesses.
"When they sentenced me to death, my heart got full of hate," Melendez said. "I was scared, very scared, to die for something I didn't do."
The hatred and fear accompanied him to his rat- and roach-infested prison cell, he said. He first planned to get into shape so he could fight the
guards who one day would come to take him to the death chamber; he also considered suicide.
"I'm not walking to that chair," Melendez said But then he found hope. The condemned men around him, the ones considered monsters by many, taught him to read, write and speak English, he said. He followed the example of many and embraced a faith, in his case, Christianity.
And he started having dreams of Puerto Rico, a sign that God knew he didn't do it, Melendez said.
One month after his conviction was overturned, Melendez walked out of prison to the cheers of his fellow death-row inmates. During his years of incarceration, he said, "I learned how to forgive, how to have compassion for others, how to love."
He moved back to Puerto Rico, where he lives with his 74-year-old mother in Manuabo. He also counsels troubled youths who are hired at the plantain field where he works.
"The years are gone," Melendez said. "I'm just taking a negative situation and making something positive."
He urged his audience to form a coalition in Utah to abolish the death penalty.
"We can get rid of this madness," he said.
Two U. law professors at the event also encouraged listeners to get involved in the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center (RMIC), which works to clear wrongly convicted defendants in Utah, Nevada and Wyoming. Jensie Anderson, RMIC president, said the group is on the verge of exonerating two inmates, one of them in Utah.
Melendez is scheduled to speak again today at 6 p.m. at the Union Theater, Olpin Student Union Building, at the University of Utah. The talk is free and open to the public.
The groups sponsoring his appearances include the Minority Law Caucus and the Public Interest Law Organization at the Quinney law school; the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah; the Utah Minority Bar Association; the Utah People for Peace and Justice; and the Utah Coalition of La Raza.
pmanson@sltrib.com
Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune

"When they sentenced me to death, my heart got full of hate," Juan Melendez says. "I was scared, very scared, to die for something I didn't do." He spoke Tuesday at U. of U. law school.

Marion · **Posted:** Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:37 pm

Fresh Off Death Row, a Man Fights For a Cause

By Adam Casella
Hoya Staff Writer
Friday, April 27, 2007

A former death-row inmate who was exonerated after almost 18 years in prison described his experience and called for the abolition of the death penalty in a speech yesterday in White Gravenor.

Juan Melendez spent 17 years, eight months and one day on death row in Florida after being convicted of the 1983 murder of Delbert Baker. There was no physical evidence linking Melendez to the crime and another prisoner, Vernon James, had admitted to murdering Baker a month before the trial began. James invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying at the trial, and his taped confession was ruled to be hearsay evidence and not shown to the jury.

Melendez was released on Jan. 3, 2002, after a transcript of James’ confession was discovered and a new trial ordered.

In the speech, sponsored by Georgetown’s Prison Outreach, Melendez said that his time spent languishing in prison was the darkest period of his life.

“Imagine yourself arrested and charged with murder, for a crime you didn’t commit,” he said. “I am no killer. My momma didn’t raise no killer.”

Melendez said he often dreamed of his native Puerto Rico during his nearly 20 years on death row, and relied on support from his family and from God. He said that some days, when confined to a 54-square-foot cell infested with rats and roaches, suicide seemed like the best option.

“If you kill yourself, you are dead but free,” he said. “A condemned man needs something more powerful than the system to sustain him.”

Upon his release, all Melendez owned was $100 and the clothes on his back.

“I kissed the ground,” he said. “I wanted to see the moon and the stars, walk on grass and dirt, hold a baby in my arms, talk to a beautiful woman.”

Melendez now works for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, an organization formed in 1976 that advocates for the elimination of capital punishment. He hopes that the death penalty, which he described as a “cruel, expensive and racist practice, which pains families,” will be banned during his lifetime.

“I am a dreamer,” he said. “Always have been.”

Melendez said he believes education is the key to abolishing the death penalty.

“We can always make progress,” Melendez said. “I had to get on death row before I became active with this cause, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Marion · **Posted:** Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:37 pm

Death row suvivor fights to save lives

Dreaming kept Juan Roberto Melendez alive.

Jackson Sun
Monday July 16, 2007

Melendez said he spent 17 years, eight months and one day in a 6-by-9-foot cell on Florida's death row for a crime he didn't commit.

"You always think that the truth will come out," said Melendez, who was 33 when he entered death row. He just had no idea it would take more than 17 years to prove his innocence.
"If I wouldn't have grabbed the Bible, I don't think I would've survived," said Melendez, now 56.

About 35 people gathered Sunday afternoon at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Jackson to hear Melendez's story of how he was falsely convicted of murder and armed robbery and later freed after the court learned that the prosecutor withheld vital evidence in the case, namely a taped confession from the real killer.

Melendez is very clear about who freed him.

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

And by a praying mother. "My mom, she's Catholic to the bones," he said to some laughter from the audience.

Melendez said he shares his testimony in part to encourage the country's leaders to rethink the death penalty.

The Tennessee General Assembly recently took a step to re-examine the death penalty. Legislators passed a bill to study the issue over the next year.

But Melendez doesn't want it to stop there, and neither does a group of concerned citizens and clergy that is calling for a state moratorium on the death penalty while the issue is studied. Several are members of the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing.

Soon, the group will ask the Jackson City Council to pass a resolution urging Gov. Phil Bredesen to issue a moratorium. TCASK members held a press conference Sunday afternoon outside Mother Liberty CME Church to announce their plans.

Daryll Coleman, pastor of Mother Liberty, found it fitting that the press conference take place on church grounds.

"I believe in stressing social justice," Coleman said. "We (the church) can serve as a symbol of equal and proper treatment for all."

Shelby and Davidson counties already have passed resolutions asking Bredesen to put a moratorium on the death penalty over the next year, said Elbon Kilpatrick, an ordained minister and member of St. Mary's Catholic Church.

Kilpatrick said the death penalty fails to uphold moral standards. "Why do people kill people to show that killing someone is wrong?"

City Councilman Johnny Dodd said that question bothers him, too. Dodd said he will support a resolution calling on Bredesen to enact a moratorium.

"You need to be 100 percent that the person committed the crime," he said. "We need to be cautious when you give people the death penalty."

Local NAACP President Harrell Carter said there is no question that the death penalty system is broken.

"The system has to be put on notice that it has a price to pay if it's wrong," Carter said.

Melendez described to the captivated audience at St. Mary's the horrid conditions of the cell he shared with rats and roaches. He and other death row inmates were allowed only four hours of recreation time a week if it wasn't raining. And there had to be only a dark cloud in the sky for the prison to call off recreation for "inclement weather," he said.

"After 10 years, I wanted out of there," Melendez said.

He fell into a deep depression and turned to suicidal thoughts. He then described what happened the day he was going to take his life.

He passed word on to "a runner," a nickname for another inmate not on death row, to get him a plastic garbage bag. He took that garbage bag and twisted it up to make a rope and fashioned a noose. Before he put it around his neck, he started thinking, "I better (lie) down and think about this a little more."

He fell into a deep sleep. He had a beautiful, vivid dream about his life back in Puerto Rico when he was young. In the dream, he could feel the sun, see the palm trees and even see four dolphins in the water.

In the dream, he said, "I'm so happy. I look to the shore. It's a lady waving at me."

That lady was his mother. That dream was a godsend, he said. It gave him hope.

Every time he would get depressed, he said he would just ask God to send him another beautiful dream.

He also learned how to read, write and speak English in prison.

He worked as a migrant worker before he went to prison. Two of his biggest mistakes in life, he said, were when he stopped listening to his mama and when he dropped out of school. He said he is grateful for the men on death row who taught him English.

He had originally moved to the United States from Puerto Rico in search of the American dream.
Anne Abernathy Wade, one of those in the audience, said she was moved by Melendez's story. Fifty years ago as a Youth in Government student at the former Jackson High School, she wrote an imaginary bill to abolish the death penalty for an assignment.

"I just felt that it was wrong," she said. "I was 16 years old."

That feeling hasn't changed 50 years later, Wade said.

She held up a bumper sticker that read, "The Death Penalty, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do)."

Today, Melendez works as a construction worker in New Mexico when he is not traveling sharing his story. He lives with his girlfriend, Judi Caruso. She is a criminal attorney.

Melendez's story will be featured in an upcoming documentary by Puerto Ricans Against the Death Penalty.

Melendez still holds fast to his dreams.

"I'm still a dreamer," he said. "I pray that in my lifetime I can see the death penalty abolished."

Juan Roberto Melendez Colon

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