After a judge grants a new trial in the Polk slaying, prosecutors say they lack sufficient evidence and drop the case.
By DAVID KARP, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published
January 4, 2002
For the 24th time in Florida's history, a wrongfully convicted killer who spent years on death row has been set free.
Juan Roberto Melendez walked out of the Union Correctional Institution around 8 p.m. on Thursday after serving nearly 18 years for a murder he says he did not commit.
He carried $100 in his hand and wore clothes issued by the state Department of Corrections.
"He was smiling," his attorney, Martin McClain said. "It was a broad smile."
A carload of Melendez's attorneys waited at the gate to drive him to Tallahassee, where he planned to spend the night. They brought him a collected wardrobe of polo shirts, Dockers pants and a jacket.
He plans a press conference today and hopes later to fly to Puerto Rico to visit his 73-year-old mother.
Death penalty opponents called on Gov. Jeb Bush on Thursday to immediately suspend the death penalty, pointing to Melendez's case as an example of how the state could have killed an innocent man.
"There are too many mistakes being uncovered to have much confidence in the way the system is working," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.
Since Florida reinstated the death penalty, 24 death row inmates have gone free. The state has put 51 convicted killers to death.
"That is a terrible record," said Dieter. "I think it would cause the state to say, why is this happening?"
Chip Thullbery, spokesman for the state attorney in Polk County who prosecuted Melendez, rejected the criticism.
"The process from their point of view worked because Mr. Melendez was released," Thullbery said.
Prosecutors do not think Melendez is actually innocent, he said.
They just don't have enough evidence to convict Melendez after Hillsborough Judge Barbara Fleischer threw out Melendez's 1984 conviction last month. One of the state's key witnesses against Melendez has died; the other recanted his testimony.
In 1984 a jury convicted Melendez, then 33, of killing Delbart Baker and leaving him on the floor of his beauty school in Auburndale. Police found his throat slashed and his head and shoulders shot.
A convicted felon testified that Melendez admitted to the crime. Another witness with a grudge against Melendez also put him at the scene.
A jury sentenced Melendez to die, and in 1986 the Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence.
In a little-noticed opinion, Justice Rosemary Barkett raised doubts about the evidence.
"There are cases, albeit not many, when a review of the evidence in the record leaves one with the fear that an execution would perhaps be terminating the life of an innocent person," Barkett wrote.
Melendez lost another round of appeals in the mid 1990s, but then he got a break.
Linda McDermott, a young death penalty attorney with the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, and McClain, a litigator who travels around the state handling death cases, took an interest in Melendez's case. They requested all the old records.
The original investigator, who had moved to Pennsylvania, flew to Florida to dig up his old files. Visiting Lakeland, he went to lunch with Melendez's first attorney, who now was a judge in Polk County.
When he closed his law practice, the judge remembered seeing old notes in the case. The notes might be interesting, he said.
They included a transcript of a taped statement from a man named Vernon James, who admitted committing the murder.
"When we found it, we were shocked," McDermott said.
In the 1990s, witnesses had testified that James confessed to the murder. But a judge reviewing the case didn't believe it.
Now the defense had the extra evidence.
"When we saw the taped statement, it was almost too good to be true," McDermott said. "It was just incredible luck in stumbling onto that statement."
Defense lawyers also discovered that prosecutor Hardy Pickard knew about James' confession too. James made an incriminating statement to the state's investigator, but the prosecutor never disclosed this to the defense.
The case then got transferred to Tampa, since no Polk County judges would review the case. After months of work, Circuit Judge Barbara Fleischer issued a 70-page opinion in December granting Melendez a new trial. She blasted the prosecutor for withholding evidence.
His boss defended him Thursday, even as they dropped the case.
"Hardy is an honorable prosecutor," Thullbery said. "If he made some legal mistakes -- and I am not saying he did -- they certainly were not with the intent of rendering an injustice."
-- Times staff writer David Karp can be contacted at (813) 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com.