A man held for 17 years on Florida's death row for the 1983 murder of a beauty-school owner will be freed after his conviction was overturned today.
Prosecutors withheld critical evidence in his original trial and officials have now decided not to retry him.
Juan Roberto Melendez, who was convicted in 1984 of the murder of Delbert Baker in Polk County, Florida, will be released from his death row cell at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida as soon as the paperwork is completed, his attorney Martin McClain said.
Baker was killed after closing his cosmetology school in the central Florida town of Auburndale in 1983. Some of his jewelry was missing.
Melendez, now 50, was convicted on the strength of an informant who said Melendez had confessed to him that he committed the killing while the two were using cocaine together. But police had no physical evidence linking Melendez to the crime.
The case was reopened in 2000 when a transcript emerged of another man, Vernon James, confessing to the crime under questioning by state investigators. James is now dead.
Last month, Florida Circuit Court Judge Barbara Fleischer overturned Melendez's death sentence on the grounds that prosecutors withheld critical evidence during trial and failed to present physical evidence implicating him, defense attorneys said.
Melendez was the 99th death row inmate to be exonerated in the United States since 1973 and the 22nd in Florida alone, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.