Juan Melendez is a Florida death row exoneree who is a member of Witness to Innocence, a Philadelphia-based organization that is run by and for death row exonerees, while empowering them to exercise their voice in the movement against the death penalty. The following is an excerpt taken from Juan's bio found on the Witness to Innocence (WTI) website. Following the excerpt below is a link to the website of Witness to Innocence where Juan's full bio can be found. This page on the Witness to Innocence (WTI) website focuses on Juan and his story, containing a link to a documentary that tells his entire story of wrongful conviction. This documentary is titled simply 6446, which is the total number of days that Juan spent on Florida's death row as an innocent man.
Taken from the WTI website:
Juan Roberto Meléndez-Colón spent 17 years, eight months, and one day on Florida’s death row for a crime he did not commit, before being exonerated in 2002. 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. Had it not been for the fortuitous discovery of a transcript of the taped confession of the real killer 16 years after Juan was sentenced to death, he almost certainly would have been executed. Ultimately, it came to light that the prosecutor had systematically withheld exculpatory evidence.
https://www.witnesstoinnocence.org/single-post/juan-melendez
In the video clip above, Juan Melendez is featured as he shares his story for the collection of videos assembled by the One for Ten project. To view all of the stories by death row exonerees recorded for the One for Ten project, visit the project website at this address: http://oneforten.com/
On February 25, 2023, I visited Juan Melendez at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico to talk with him about his time on Florida's death row, focusing particularly on the trauma he endured from watching dozens of men who he had come to know on death row walk to the death chamber. When Juan was sent to death row in 1984, the death penalty had been reinstated since 1979 and 10 people had been executed during that time. By the time that Juan was released from death row in 2002, 51 people had been executed by the state of Florida. Juan recalled the traumatic experience of coming to know the men who were condemned to die, many of them as very close friends, only to watch them walk to the death chamber to be executed one by one.