BY PHIL LONG AND AMY DRISCOLL
adriscoll@herald.com

RAIFORD -- A chance discovery two years ago of an old legal transcript in a lawyer's files led to freedom Thursday for Juan Melendez -- 17 years after he was sent to Florida's Death Row for a murder another man claimed to have committed.

Polk County prosecutors effectively set Melendez free when they announced Thursday that they do not have sufficient evidence to re-try him for the 1983 slaying of a Central Florida beauty school owner.

The official release came hours later, when Melendez walked out of Union Correctional Institution in Raiford with a new set of clothes, compliments of the state. His team of lawyers and their investigator, all from the state's Capital Collateral Office that handles death-penalty appeals, rushed by car from Tallahassee to pick him up at the prison gates.

``I tell you, I feel great,'' the former migrant worker said with a non-stop grin, as he stood outside the prison, his attorneys at his side.

He hadn't learned of his impending release until mid-afternoon, he said, when a prison officer broke the news. ``I was in a state of shock,'' Melendez said.

He insisted he does not feel anger toward the legal system. ``If I would get bitter, all I would do is torment myself,'' Melendez said, clutching a windbreaker against the cold night air. ``They could give me a billion dollars and that would not pay for what they did to me.''

His lawyers said justice came late for Melendez.

``I'm happy to finally have it over and to have Juan released,'' said attorney Marty McClain, who pursued the appeal. ``But it really is a sad day that the system allowed this to happen and for it to go on so long.''

Melendez, 50, was sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of Delbert ``Mr. Del'' Baker in his Auburndale beauty salon. Melendez lost several rounds of appeals and his death sentence was upheld. He was nearing the end of his appeals when his former defense lawyer, Roger Alcott, discovered a key transcript as he moved old boxes of files following his appointment as a Polk County circuit judge in early 2000.

The transcript details a conversation taped about a month before Melendez's trial. On the tape, Vernon James, a now-deceased witness in the case, admitted being involved in the murder and said that Melendez was not at the scene. Alcott has said he attempted to use the information at trial but was legally blocked from doing so after James, taking the Fifth Amendment on the witness stand, refused to testify.

Alcott refused to comment Thursday.

CONFESSION ALLEGED

Transcript in hand, Melendez's appellate lawyers continued to investigate, finding that James, once a suspect in the murder, had told up to 20 other people -- including a former law enforcement officer -- of his involvement in the murder. Some said he had confessed to the killing.

Armed with new evidence, the lawyers returned to state court to appeal Melendez's conviction. An evidentiary hearing was held, and on Dec. 6, Circuit Judge Barbara Fleischer in Tampa ruled that Melendez was entitled to a new trial.

She found that the trial prosecutor, Hardy Pickard, had failed to disclosed potentially damaging information to the defense, including serious inconsistencies in statements by John Berrien, one of two major state witnesses.

Additionally, the judge said Pickard misled the jury about testimony from the other main state witness, David Luna Falcon, by telling jurors that Falcon had ``nothing to gain'' from testifying. But Falcon, who testified at trial that Melendez had confessed, had struck a deal with prosecutors to reduce his own prison time in exchange for testimony.

No physical evidence ever connected Melendez to the murder, Fleischer noted. ``Rather, his conviction and sentence of death hinged on the jury's and the judge's belief of John Berrien and David Luna Falcon,'' she wrote.

NEW EVIDENCE

The new evidence, along with Pickard's withholding of information, ``combine to undermine the confidence in the outcome of the defendant's original trial,'' she concluded.

Pickard had similar involvement in another Death Row case currently under federal court review. In 1984, he prosecuted Bill Kelley for the 1966 murder of Charles Von Maxcy of Sebring. Kelley's appellate lawyers have argued that Pickard withheld information from the jury that showed a witness had been offered immunity in exchange for testimony.

After the judge's ruling in the Melendez case, the Polk County State Attorney's Office faced the prospect of re-trying a 19-year-old case in which one key witness, Berrien, had recanted and the other, Falcon, was now dead.

PROSECUTION OVER

Thursday, prosecutors filed notice they would not pursue the case.

``We believe that the evidence was there at the time we prosecuted him,'' said Chip Thullbery, administrative assistant state attorney in Polk County. ``After all these years, though, we are left with nothing to proceed on.''

Melendez is the 99th Death Row inmate freed in the United States by new evidence, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Project in Washington. He said inmates were released more frequently in the past decade -- roughly a half-dozen each year -- due to newly discovered evidence or newly allowed DNA testing.

Last year, Jerry Frank Townsend, who is mentally disabled, was released from prison after DNA tests linked another man to some killings in Fort Lauderdale to which Townsend had confessed.

PUERTO RICO

In his first days of freedom, Melendez, who has no relatives in Florida, will probably go visit his 73-year-old mother in Puerto Rico, he said.

``I'm going to go home to look after my momma,'' he told reporters Thursday night. ``She's 73 years old. She's all alone. I just want to spend time with her.''