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"The death penalty is all about hate and revenge" - that was the message Juan Melendez, a man who spent 17 years and eight months on Death Row, had for about 90 law students and others Tuesday.

"Don't tell me America can send a man to the moon and not keep a condemned man in prison for life," Melendez, 51, said inside the Bailey Courtroom at University of Florida's Levin College of Law.

When Melendez walked out of the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford on Jan. 3, 2002, he became the 99th inmate nationwide - and the 24th in Florida - to be released from Death Row after new evidence surfaced.

Melendez said when the state decides to execute someone murder, it doesn't diminish the grief of the victim's family, rather, it gives politicians a chance to look as if they are being tough on crime.

While he acknowledged that many prisoners on Death Row are guilty, he said the fact that men like him came so close to being executed proves the system needs to be reformed.

"You got 25 people let out already; it's obvious something is wrong," he said, adding that he would like to see a repeat of what occurred in Illinois in Florida. This year, outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 death row inmates to life in prison without parole, pointing to the possibility of errors in prosecution that had led to the release of 13 condemned inmates since 1977.

Raised in Puerto Rico, Melendez was working in Polk County as a fruit picker before he was sentenced to death in 1984 for the 1983 killing of Auburndale beauty salon owner Delbert Baker. A police informant implicated Melendez and another man. The second man cut a deal with prosecutors and testified against Melendez, but 12 years later, he recanted, saying he was coerced.

Melendez caught a bigger break when a transcript of another man's confession to the crime was discovered in 1999 and prosecutors later decided they lacked the evidence to warrant a court-ordered retrial.

Melendez, who learned English from other inmates, recalled his thoughts of suicide and the sadness he felt while living in a 6-by-9-foot cell. The support he said he received from his mother and faith in God is what kept him strong.

"It's not a picnic (in prison); there's real suffering in there," he said.

Melendez also joked about adjusting to his new life, saying he was baffled the first time he was told he could use a cell phone to talk to his mother in Puerto Rico.

In response to a student who said she was surprised that he wasn't bitter about his ordeal, Melendez said he's learned to let the past go.

"Being free is beautiful," he said. "I take it day by day . . . and try to turn the negative into a positive."

Melendez now lives with his mother in Puerto Rico and makes his living from donations he receives at speaking engagements, often sponsored by Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The group's goal is for the state to take a "time out" on the death penalty and review the system, group director Abe Bonowitz said.

But that may be a tall order because Gov. Jeb Bush has proved to be a steadfast supporter of the death penalty, and voters in November overwhelmingly approved a measure to insert it into the state constitution. In Bush's proposed budget, a provision seeks to speed up executions by privatizing the capital-appeals process - moving the responsibility for Death Row appeals to private lawyers rather than ones working as state employees.

This would close the state's legal offices that file appeals for Death Row inmates, three agencies known as the Capital Collateral Representative Counsel. Without the counsel working on his behalf, Melendez says, he likely would be dead.