Innocent man released after 17 years on death row
 'Not bitter' . . . Juan Melendez smiles
as he talks with reporters after being released from Union
Correctional Institution, 17 years after he was sent to Florida's
Death Row for a murder. Photo: AFP
By Oliver Burkeman, New York
A man who spent more than 17 years on death row in
Florida for the murder of a beauty school proprietor has been freed
after a chance discovery in a lawyer's filing cabinet showed that
someone else had repeatedly confessed to the crime.
Juan Roberto Melendez, 50, was convicted in 1984 of the murder of
Delbert Baker, who was shot in the head after locking up for the
night at Mr Del's Beauty School in Auburndale, Florida, on
September13, 1983. But a judge has ruled that the prosecution
withheld crucial evidence at the trial which revealed that another
man, Vernon James, had admitted his responsibility for the murder to
lawyers, investigators and acquaintances.
"They can give me a billion dollars and they cannot pay for what
they did," Mr Melendez said yesterday after his release from the
Union correctional institution in Rainford, Florida.
Despite nearly 18 years of imprisonment on a conviction based on
no physical evidence, the former migrant worker, born in Brooklyn
but raised in Puerto Rico, told reporters: "If I would get bitter,
all I would do is torment myself ... I tell you, I feel great."
His conviction rested on the testimony of a convicted criminal,
David Luna Falcon, who said Mr Melendez had confessed while the two
were taking cocaine. The Supreme Court upheld the sentence on
appeal.
But in 2000 Mr Melendez's lawyer, Roger Alcott, was appointed a
county judge, and while moving boxes of files in his office he
discovered the transcript of a conversation a month before the trial
in which an early suspect, Vernon James, told investigators that he
had killed Baker and Mr Melendez was not present.
James died two years after Mr Melendez was convicted. Last month
a Florida judge overturned the death sentence, ruling that the
prosecutor had failed to disclose the confession to the defence at
the trial.
Judge Barbara Fleischer said the prosecutor had also misled the
jury about Falcon's testimony by arguing that he had "nothing to
gain" from testifying against Mr Melendez.
In fact Falcon had agreed with prosecutors that his own prison
time would be reduced if he did so, she said. Falcon has since
died.
The Sun-Herald
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