Juan Melendez is skeptical when it comes to pats on the back.

When he was making his way through Florida's court system charged with murder, his defense attorney pat his back assuring him he would be home soon.

That homecoming took almost 18 years.

Melendez, a native New Yorker raised in Puerto Rico, sat on Florida's Death Row for almost 18 years for a crime he didn't commit.

He calls himself ``a prime example of how the system is broken.''

Wednesday night, wearing sunglasses and several crosses around his neck, Melendez sat in between an assistant state attorney and a Death Row critic, taking part in a panel discussion at Miami-Dade Community College's Wolfson Campus. The topic: The Death Penalty: A Wrongful Conviction?

The audience of college and high school students listened as Melendez dominated the discussion, talking of his personal experiences and opposition to the death penalty.

Hialeah-Miami Lakes High School senior Lizzett Scotton, covering the meeting for her school newspaper, was the first to grab the microphone and ask questions.

''How do you feel toward people who agree with the death penalty?'' the student asked.

Taking the lessons learned while he awaited his execution, Melendez replied that he liked being around people with different views because that gave him a chance to share his story and, hopefully, change their minds.

For him, time is too precious to be spent resenting people.

''I don't have time to hate. I don't waste my energy,'' he said.

The discussion was part of the community college's One Book, One Community program, organized by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts, which hosts public forums to dovetail with novels the students are reading.

The program's current title, Ernest Gaines' A Lesson Before Dying, tells the story of a man who was wrongfully convicted of a murder and sentenced to death.

As the book was discussed, Melendez nodded his head. He was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of Delbert Baker in his Auburndale beauty salon.

Melendez's conviction fell apart when the real killer eventually confessed.

Scotton turned to Assistant State Attorney Penny Brill and asked if she thought Melendez had slipped through the justice system's cracks.

While Brill was unable to comment on Melendez's case, saying she didn't know enough about it, she did say no prosecutor would feel good about themselves if they sent an innocent person to Death Row.

``That is a prosecutor's nightmare.''