Juan Melendez

Juan Roberto Meléndez-Colón spent seventeen years, eight months and one day on Florida's death row for a crime he did not commit.   His story highlights the many problems that plague the death penalty system, including its high risk and inevitability of being imposed on the innocent, its unfair application on the basis of race and ethnicity and its almost exclusive imposition on our most vulnerable members of society—the poor.

The crime in Juan's case was particularly brutal.  The victim, Delbert Baker (a white man), was shot three times and his throat was slashed, leaving the crime scene drenched in blood.  Juan, who could not afford an attorney, was convicted and sentenced to death within a week even though there was no physical evidence against him.  His conviction rested on the testimony of two questionable witnesses--a police informant with an unsavory criminal record and a co-defendant who was threatened with the electric chair but who ultimately received a sentence of two years probation after he testified against Juan at trial and after Juan was convicted and sentenced to death.  In spite of the fact that Juan's case was riddled with doubt right from the start, the Florida Supreme Court upheld his case three times on appeal.  Had it not been for the fortuitous discovery of a transcript of the taped confession of the real killer sixteen years after Juan was sentenced to death, he almost certainly would have been executed. Ultimately, it came to light that the real killer had confessed to over sixteen people and the prosecutor had systematically withheld exculpatory evidence.

Since his release from death row on January 3, 2002, Juan has shared his story of supreme injustice, survival and hope with tens of thousands of people in the United States, Canada and Europe.  News reports (Spanish and English) and audience feedback consistently indicate that Juan is a charismatic and captivating speaker who opens hearts and minds about the death penalty and inspires activism.

Juan has testified before various legislative bodies in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, New York and New Mexico.  He was intensively involved in the New Mexico repeal campaign where, over a six-year period, his story appeared in numerous media outlets and he spoke to thousands of people of faith and thousands more high-school, college and law students.  He also had two face-to-face meetings with Governor Bill Richardson who cited wrongful death penalty convictions as his primary reason for repealing the death penalty in New Mexico.   Juan currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and he is proud to call New Mexico his home.

Juan's story is featured in the internationally-acclaimed documentary Juan Meléndez 6446, described by Sister Helen Prejean as a “powerful [film that is] . . . heartbreaking and maddening . . . and stirs the soul.”  His story was also depicted in Leslie Lytle's Execution's Doorstep: True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damned, and in the Fall of 2008, Juan's article, Presumed Guilty: A Death Row Exoneree Shares his Story of Supreme Injustice and Reflections on the Death Penalty, was published in the Texas Tech Law Review [41 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 1 (Fall 2008)].  Juan is a member of the Board of Witness to Innocence and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

When asked why he does this work, Juan responds, “I have no choice.  I left a lot of good people behind in there and they're killing them.  I owe it to them and I will not stop until we have abolished the death penalty in every corner of this nation!”

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