Melendez's conviction was scrapped in December by a circuit judge in Hills-borough, Tampa, after he had lost several rounds of appeals and had his death sentence upheld by the Florida Supreme Court. Citing the new testimony and the fact that information had been withheld from the defense, the judge ruled that the prosecutors would have to try Melendez again if they wanted to keep him in prison.

Melendez was convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the murder of Delbert Baker in Baker's Auburndale Beauty Salon a year earlier. At least four confessions to investigators and lawyers by a previous suspect, Vernon James, now deceased, were not presented as evidence.

Two years ago, Roger Alcott, Melendez's lawyer, discovered a key transcript while moving boxes of files in his office. The document records a conversation a month before the trial in which James told investigators that he had killed Baker and that Melendez was not present. At the time of the trial James took the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify.

There was no physical evidence linking Melendez to the murder, only the accounts of two witnesses. The jury did not hear other testimony that would have cast doubt on these witnesses' statements.

Hardy Pickard, the Polk State prosecutor, withheld interview notes, police reports, and other potentially damaging information from the defense, including evidence that would have undermined the witnesses' credibility. Pickard also misled the jury, stating that a key witness had nothing to gain from testifying, when in fact he had struck a deal to reduce his own prison time in exchange for his testimony.

According to testimony in the Hillsborough Circuit Court, Polk County prosecutors had a practice of issuing secret subpoenas that hid evidence from the defense. The Auburndale police apparently wrote the reports months after the incident.

Melendez's appellate lawyer Martin McClain said, "The system is not premised on the notion that the prosecutor wants to win, but that he wants justice to be done. The way this was done is not consistent with that notion."

Melendez's case offers hope for another Death Row inmate, Bill Kelley, who was convicted of murder in 1984 in a trial prosecuted by Pickard. The case is currently under review by federal court in Fort Lauderdale. Kelley's lawyers have argued that Pickard withheld information from the jury showing that a key witness had been offered immunity in exchange for testimony.

Since 1973, 99 death row prisoners have been exonerated and freed in the United States. Of the 3,700 death row inmates, 373, or 10 percent are in Florida, the third highest after Texas and Virginia. Twenty-four have been released from death row in Florida since the reintroduction of the death penalty in 1981, while 51 have been executed.  
 
 
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