Juan Meléndez-Colón Speaks of Faith and Redemption and the Corrupt Justice System He Fought Against for 17 Years – It was hard to imagine that on May 2, 1984 when Juan Melendez was first arrested, not only was he wrongly accused of murder and eventually sentenced to be executed by the state of Florida, but he could neither speak or read English, other than a few swear words.
It took him 17 years, 8 months, and one day to be, not only exonerated, but to find his voice. Despite his heavy accent, Mr. Meléndez gave a powerful and spellbinding speech for an hour on Sunday afternoon, depicting how he survived and many others, through execution or suicide or neglect, did not.
Like many before him, this is not simply a case of wrongful conviction but of total systemic failure. The system was complicit in these mistakes, as his trial in front of 11 whites and 1 black, defended by an overworked and under-resourced public defender, was based on the testimony of an official police informant – a snitch, as Mr. Meléndez called him, who would testify that Mr. Meléndez had confessed to him that he had committed the crime.
Never mind that this informant bore a grudge against him.
What Mr. Meléndez would find out is that the state of Florida had known for a long time that he was innocent. However, it was only discovered years later, almost by complete accident, that they had the confession of the real killer, with corroborating evidence and even physical evidence against this man.
He had alibi witnesses who testified that the informant had a grudge against him. “But I had a problem,” he said. “Every witness that I had on my side was from the African-American race. A black man, a black woman. And when a black man testified for the state, for the prosecutor, he had credibility… But when a black man testified for the defense, all of a sudden the credibility was gone.”
“Thursday, they found me guilty,” he said. “Friday the same week, they send me to death and the judge complained it was taking too long.”
“When they sent me to death, my heart got filled with hate,” he said. “I was scared, very scared to die for a crime I did not commit.”
He remembers the day he first landed on death row, a Tuesday, November 2, 1984. “The place was horrifying, it was dark, it was cold. They kept me in a six by nine foot cell… The place was also infested with rats and roaches.”
He would tell stories about how bad the food was, how one had to get it quickly before the rats and roaches would. Moreover, how the cold conditions led to rats seeking out warm bodies to stay warm.
While it took him 17 years, 8 months and a day to be exonerated, along the way he would re-discover his humanity.
“I did not know how to read, I did not know how to write, and I did not know how to speak English,” Juan Meléndez, born in New York but raised in Puerto Rico where he currently resides, told the Davis audience. “Then they told me the most beautiful thing I would hear at that time, they told me, they would teach me.” Those were his fellow death row inmates.
“The worst of the worst, the most dishonorable and hated people of this nation, the ones the prosecutor calls monsters, taught this Puerto Rican how to read, how to write, and how to speak English” he said powerfully. “If they hadn’t taught me, I would never have survived that place.”
He said without that, he never would have been able to communicate with his attorneys or with letter writers “who showed me so much love, so much compassion, and who made me feel like a human being.”
Still, after ten years, he gave up. For most people on death row, the only way out was suicide. He was convinced that they would never believe he did not do it and they would kill him anyway.
“I never seen my friends kill themselves,” he said. “because I cannot see through the walls! What I see is they move their bodies out.”
He described grabbing a mirror to see his friend for the last time and “I see a purple blue face that does not look like my friend.”
The way they would commit suicide was to purchase through trade a Hefty garbage bag from an individual who smuggles things into death row. They then use the tie to create a rope and a noose, attach it to the bars and jump from their bed to their death.
Juan Melêndez was contemplating suicide. He got the bag and was ready.
“I laid down and I fall into a deep, deep, deep sleep,” he said. He dreamt that he was a little kid again, “doing the things I used to do as a little kid. The things that make me happy. The things that make me smile.”
He dreamt he was back in Puerto Rico, swimming in the beautiful Caribbean Sea, the water warm.
He sees his mother and she’s happy because he’s happy. “And then I wake up and it don’t smell like a beach. I grab that rope that I was meant to take my life with and I walk straight to the toilet and I looked at the toilet and I looked at the rope, and I say really loud, ‘I don’t want to die.’ “
He flushed it down the toilet. Over the last years in prison, he had lots of beautiful dreams. “Every time I got depressed, every time I wanted out of there, every time suicide thoughts came to my mind, my beautiful God sent me a beautiful dream,” Juan Meléndez told the audience.
Juan Meléndez became a Christian in prison – others found other religions. The key was not the specific religion, but rather, he said, that the only way that you can survive is that you have to trust that there is something more powerful than the system. The death penalty is made and carried out by humans and humans make mistakes.
When he was released, his mother would tell him, “For all them years, for all of them long long years, I was saving money to bring your dead body back to the Island of Puerto Rico.”
He said, “And no mother in this world should go through that pain!”
In the end, he said he was not saved by the system, he was saved by the grace of God and saved despite the system.
His attorney came to him and told him she could not handle the case. He said he was incredulous, he didn’t need a new attorney at this point, and she knew his case better than anyone else.
She explained that she lost five clients, he said. He knew what that meant. “When she said she lost five clients, that’s five human beings that got executed, killed by the state of Florida.”
She said not to worry, she is going to have them assign to his case the three best lawyers they had, and the best investigator.
“I finally got the dream team,” he said ironically.
His new attorney said, you lost too many appeals. He said they would try one more time, but if they lost this one he would be executed within two years.
It was when the new attorney sent out the investigator to talk to his trial defense attorney that “my first miracle occurred.”
His trial defense attorney just became a judge.
He explained why this was a break, “You see, when he became a judge, it creates in the legal world a conflict of interest. That conflict of interest gave me the opportunity to move my case out of that racist county. That county where they fabricated the case against me.”
The case moves from a rural county to the county where Tampa is, and falls into the hands of a judge whom he described as a “brave woman who wants to do the right thing.” Judge Annabel Fletcher, to whom he said he owes his life.
His old attorney, now a judge, said that he left a box with Juan Meléndez’s case in it and he told the new defense attorney they could go and have that box.
The investigator went to the office, and found a tape cassette with the confession of the real killer. His trial defense lawyer had that tape, one month before his trial.
When the judge heard the tape confession of the real killer, “she immediately made a call to the prosecutor’s office… and demand that he send any papers, any documents, any notes about my case.”
They also had a transcript, a copy of the real confession. The prosecutor had it one month before trial. He also had documents that corroborated that taped confession. 16 documents that he would never turn over to the defense.
“This creates in the real world a Brady rule violation,” he said. “Withholding exculpatory evidence, evidence that indicated that I did not commit the crime.”
They had a number of hearings and “I was able to establish more than twenty witnesses that also corroborated the taped confession of the real killer, including the wife and sisters of the real killer.”
“In the end they even found physical evidence against the real killer,” he said. “The real killer was also a police informant.”
The judge had all of this information and she decided to write a 72-page opinion on it. “In the 72-page opinion, she chastised the prosecutor for the way he handled the case. She chastised the investigator for the way he investigated the case.”
She also chastised the defense attorney for his ineffectual defense.
In her opinion, she granted Juan Meléndez a new trial.
“She let them know that the case was terribly damaged, implying that you have an innocent man on death row,” he said.
The prosecutor, at this point, decided not to prosecute and dropped his case, allowing for Mr. Meléndez to be released after 17 years, 8 months, and one day in prison for a crime that he had not committed.
He tells his release story. They did not let him know that they were releasing him. Instead, they took him next door and asked him strange questions about what job he had. He said, “I’m in death row, they have no jobs in death row.”
She came really close and whispered in his ear, “I’m fixing your paperwork, they’re going to release you today.”
He describes the cartoon character getting slammed on the head, “he’s in a state of shock, but he’s smiling.”
“I have a confession to make,” Juan Meléndez said as he wrapped up his talk. “I’m still a dreamer. I dream and I pray to God every day that in my time, the death penalty can be abolished.”
He said no matter how good the legal system is, “there always will be a risk to execute an innocent man. We can always release an innocent man from prison. We don’t have no problems with that. But we can never, and I repeat can never, release an innocent man from the grave.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I am a fan of innocent people being exonerated. I am even a fan if replacing the current death penalty with stricter rules. I am not for eliminating. The folks who vote for prop 34 will be responsible for murderers being set free. The death penalty is a tool used to make people plead to life without parole.
If this passes it wont be long until a jury sets a murderer free who we all know is guilty.
You mean Hirschfield?
If a jury sets free a murderer who “we all know is guilty” it will not be because we do or don’t have the death penalty, it will be because the system will be just as broken with or without it, except at least without it, the mistake of executing an innocent person won’t be able to be made.
As long as the system can tolerate the kind of heinous behavior by prosecutors and the racism involved in this case, fairness will fail. Fixing the system is more complex than just discontinuing the death penalty, but it’s a start.
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If this passes it wont be long until a jury sets a murderer free who we all know is guilty.”
I’m not following you. Why do you think a guilt phase decision would be changed by the elimination of the penalty phase?
[quote]I’m not following you. Why do you think a guilt phase decision would be changed by the elimination of the penalty phase?[/quote]
People facing the death penalty will take life without parol to avoid the death penalty. Now every murder will go to jury trial. We’ve had juries here in Yolo County fail to convict people for possession of marijuana when it was in their pants. When juries fall for the “not my pants” defense I lose a little faith.
I think we debunked that a few weeks ago. The data doesn’t support your claim. People in states where there is no death penalty still cop to pleas.
“We’ve had juries here in Yolo County fail to convict people for possession of marijuana when it was in their pants. When juries fall for the “not my pants” defense I lose a little faith. “
In that case, there was strong positive evidence that an individual put it in their pants to hold it for them. It wasn’t a whimsical contention by the defense. There was no doubt whose marijuana it was and it was not the defendant’s.
People who plead in states with no death penalty plead to lower term sentences. I know we differ on this but I like killers to be kept away from society.
Knowing you are holding someone else’s dope is still possession.
You are changing your argument. Your initial comment was that a guilty person would go free, now you are suggesting that someone might get a lower term sentence. I agree though life with parole is not a whole lot different from life without given the infrequency of parole boards freeing someone.
“Knowing you are holding someone else’s dope is still possession. “
I believe the facts were the guy and girl were there together, the police come, the guy stuffs the weed in her pants and tries to run off. She is caught, they find the weed. Are you really arguing that is possession?
I’m not changing my argument. When LWOP is the worst thing that can happen why not roll the dice and go to trial. I don’t think the guilt phase will be changed by the elimination of the penalty phase.
If you are talking about debunking from your 9-24-12 that’s not debunking, it’s opinion.
But the statistics show that plea rates are not lower in states without the DP…
Yes, using the anecdotal evidence of DA’s who use harsher plea deals.
Melendez spoke on behalf of “Witness to Innocence”, a national organization on the other side of the country, which works to get rid of the death penalty. He is sponsored by the group.
There is no direct relationship between Melendez/Witness to Innocence and Proposition 34.
Prop. 34 is a deal with the devil, ending the death penalty but depriving innocent inmates of state paid attorneys, giving millions to law enforcement but providing no legal help to innocent inmates.
Prop. 34 proponents falsely claim the Innocence Project will help
innocent LWOP inmates, but the Project does not have the funds to do
that.
Hard to respect Prop. 34 proponents when they’re dishonest about the
ramifications of their proposition.