When "Brother"—the man who helped him learn to read, write and speak English—died in his arms, Juan Melendez wanted revenge. Didn't matter that he'd have to fight past friends—fellow Florida death-row convicts—who urged him to remain calm. He'd get by on rage and fighting prowess; years of shadowboxing, push-ups and calisthenics, all while waiting to die for a murder he didn't commit, had steeled his body.
"I had muscles coming out of my eyeballs," Melendez told a UNLV crowd last Wednesday.
Nor was he concerned about the surly corrections officers or the guards in the watchtower, surveying the yard with their machine guns and orders to shoot to kill in case of an insurrection. Brother, a black man, lay on the ground, convulsing, white foam erupting from his mouth and nose. Guards took their time alerting the nurse, who then lumbered over to Brother, glanced at him and refused to perform CPR. So Melendez did it. Three breaths, pump. Three breaths, pump. Three breaths, pump. Brother's chest heaved, his eyes opened. Then ... they rolled back in his head. He died.
"I felt the life force go out of him," Melendez says.
Inmates could barely restrain him as he showered the staff with epithets, an outburst that got him 90 days of solitary confinement. For "disrespect."
"I wanted to fight," he said. "They let him die like a dog."
Drawn here by Friday's execution of Lawrence Colwell Jr. in Carson City, Melendez and other "death penalty abolitionists" held a noon vigil at a downtown church and an afternoon forum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on eliminating capital punishment. UNLV's School of Social Work, the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada and Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty hosted the forum as the local stop on the cross-country Journey of Hope Abolition Day '04 Tour, meant to raise hackles about the perceived inhumanity of capital punishment.
Cases like Melendez's—convicted despite the absence of evidence linking him to a 1983 murder, implicated by an informant and freed, nearly 18 years later, after discovery of a taped confession by the real killer—point to the need for a moratorium, if not outright abolition of state and federal executions, reasons Nancy Hart, president of the Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
Recent years have seen several death penalties commuted and death-row inmates exonerated and freed. Last year, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates. Thirteen inmates were exonerated, including several who, it was discovered, were tortured by police into confessing to crimes.
It's difficult to take the nation's pulse on death sentences. A Gallup poll in May showed 74 percent of Americans favored it, yet the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty cites growing ambivalence. Application differs by region, with the South and West carrying the baton; six death penalty states haven't executed anyone, and New Hampshire doesn't offer the ultimate retribution.
Colwell's lethal-injection death, for the 1994 murder of Florida tourist Frank Rosenstock, marked Nevada's 10th since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977. Hart has concerns about the state's recent history with executions.
"We have the highest per-capita death-row population in the country. Why? We have a high rate of blacks on death row—40 percent, when they're about 10 percent (12 percent) of the population. Why? Colwell was the ninth person to volunteer [for death], meaning he didn't exhaust his appeals, he just gave them up. Why is this? We allow the execution of juveniles. Why?"
Abe Bonowitz is wearing a "Stop The Death Penalty" T-shirt and standing next to a table with a small line of offerings with similar messages—hats, keychains, posters. Time was, he would've ridiculed anyone in such garb; he was as pro-death as they come. Today, Bonowitz is director of Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. By fighting for capital punishment, Bonowitz came to abhor it. A convert whose missionary work included a stint with the death-penalty section of the Ohio Public Defender Commission, where he interacted with family members of murder victims and death-row convicts, and whose zeal takes him to campuses and courthouses all over the country, Bonowitz fears federal prosecutors, egged on by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, are overzealously pursuing the death penalty.
"Ashcroft has told them to pursue the death penalty whenever possible," Bonowitz told the crowd of 100 inside the Dungan Humanities auditorium.
In Carson City last month, American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada officials pressed for changes in Senate Bill 38, passed last session. It has a provision making the death penalty an option in a murder that aides the cause of terrorism.
There's no harm in wanting prosecutors to pursue capital punishment where it's justified, argues Tom Sargent, spokesman for the Nevada attorney general's office, but he takes umbrage at the suggestion of a federal directive that states increase capital punishment prosecutions. Sargent dismisses Ashcroft's influence.
"States would certainly bristle at the federal government getting into their business and telling them to prosecute cases a certain way," he says. "I'm confident the prosecutors in Nevada are doing the job that's required of them."
Officials with the Clark County district attorney's office didn't return a call for comment.
Bill Pelke's experience with the death penalty came via the 1995 murder of his 78-year-old grandmother, Ruth, who taught Bible classes for children in Gary, Indiana. Four assailants—all girls—ransacked her house, stealing $10 and an old car. A year later, 16-year-old Paula Cooper became the youngest female in America on death row.
Initially, Pelke backed the sentence. After meeting Helen Prejean, whose book Dead Man Walking inspired the movie, he devoted his energies to repealing capital punishment. He's since forgiven Cooper, celebrating her turnaround—general equivalency diploma, college degree, employment. Though incarcerated, Cooper works for a tax-preparation company; she keeps 10 percent of her earnings, 90 percent goes into a victim-retribution fund. Pelke's convinced that causing a death shouldn't be punished with death, a message he hoped would spur fellow abolitionists in Nevada to take action.
"The answer is love and compassion for all humanity," Pelke said. "Hate the sin, but love the sinner."
These days, Melendez's anger is focused on repealing the death penalty and attacking related laws, such as those in many states that don't offer reparations for the wrongly convicted. Melendez is taut, with a fierce scowl, a fullback's build and plenty of machismo. "We Puerto Ricans are manly men," he joked.
He wasn't so cocky when FBI agents arrested him in 1983, charging him with the murder of cosmetology school owner Delbert Baker. Shipped from Pennsylvania—he worked on a farm—he was back in Florida, where he'd lived after coming from Puerto Rico. All along, he believed cops would realize it was a case of mistaken identity, a belief buttressed by his defense lawyer. Within months, a jury of 11 whites and one black sentenced him to death. He couldn't articulate his frustration with his inept defense. What English he knew were curse words.
"I was scared to die for something I didn't do."
Fear turned to despair. Melendez spoke of racing to beat the roaches to his food once it was pushed through a small slit in his cell. He bunked with rats, too scared to look at them as they scaled his leg—he wouldn't be able to sleep. Though hesistant, he forced himself to look at the blue faces and limp bodies of friends who'd committed suicide as they were wheeled out. Once, he fashioned a garbage bag into a noose and prepared to take his own life, but he fell asleep. His mother's prayers got him through the anger, sadness and near insanity, he says, until he found salvation in religion. That he was spared, "and talking to you here, today, in Nevada," is a miracle.
The miracle began inauspicioulsy, with the resignation of his defense lawyer, who was distraught over seeing five death-row clients executed. Before leaving, she amassed a stellar team of replacements, who found a taped confession by the real killer, won Menendez a new trial and, eventually, his freedom.
On the day of his release, Melendez says he was treated like a king—no more handcuffed escorts, no more leery sneers from guards, clapping and tears from the friends he was leaving behind.
"They called me mister," he said, "and it felt good."