His cell was infested with roaches and rats that climbed into his bed. He couldn't work or take any classes. He watched his three daughters grow up in pictures. And his only visitors - his mom and aunt - just came twice early on because it was too painful for him to see them.

His only way out: suicide. But, he said, his belief in God kept him from hanging himself.

"I don't know the language. I don't know the system. I'm lost in there," Melendez told an audience Wednesday at Weber State University. "I didn't know when they were coming to get me [for execution]."

After the Florida Supreme Court upheld Melendez's murder conviction and death sentence three times, he was awarded a new trial - in a different county - and was found innocent.

Melendez - the 99th person to be released from one of the nation's death rows since 1973 - shared his story with about 200 people as part of the university's Human Rights Week sponsored by Amnesty International.

Melendez, 57, now lives in Maunabo, Puerto Rico, and works in construction. He said he is not angry or bitter because of his experience. Instead, Melendez has become an activist. He travels throughout the United States and Europe to rally people against the death penalty.

"I was not saved by the system. I was saved [despite] the system," he said. "I was saved by the grace of God."

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Melendez was raised in Puerto Rico. He remembers not having shoes to wear to school and eventually dropping out of high school to work in the sugarcane fields. At 19, he moved to the United States and worked as a migrant farmworker.

"I came for the American dream, but I didn't know I was going to live the American nightmare," he said.

He later served six years in a Florida prison for armed robbery.

But in September 1983, after Melendez served time for the robbery, Delbert Baker was found dead at his beauty school. He had been shot three times, his throat was cut and his gold jewelry was missing.

A police informant, who had a grudge against Melendez, pointed a finger at him. A year later, after a three-day trial, Melendez was found guilty of murder and armed robbery by a jury with 11 whites and one black and sentenced to death.

Melendez said going through the system was tough because he didn't know much English. He credits his fellow prisoners for teaching him how to read and speak the language.

"If they didn't teach me, I never would have survived that place," he said.

While he was in prison, Melendez also said he returned to his faith in God. He believes God gave him "beautiful dreams" that gave him hope that he might see the world again.

"I had to search for something that was more powerful than the system," he said. "You need to find spirituality."

About 16 years after his conviction, a judge determined that Melendez, then 49, was entitled to a new trial. A lawyer had found a taped confession by the real killer, Vernon James, who later died.

Melendez walked out of prison on Jan. 3, 2002. The only compensation for his 18 years: $100, a pair of pants and a shirt.

"I wanted to see the moon, the stars and walk on grass and dirt and hold a little baby in my arms, and talk to some beautiful women," he said.

Melendez, now a grandfather of six, said he dreams about the day the death penalty is abolished and criminals who are convicted of heinous crimes serve life in prison without parole. He also said some felons are not the same people they were when they committed the crime.

"You can never release an innocent man from the grave," he said.

The story, while touching, failed to change at least one student's mind about the death penalty.

Nick Ramos, a Weber sophomore who wants to be a lawyer, said that he found Melendez's case "interesting" but still believes in the death penalty.

Andrea Smith, a political-science freshman, said she is against the death penalty because she believes inmates can change in prison, and the justice system is "corrupt and powered by money."

jsanchez@sltrib.com

Want more information?

Juan Roberto Melendez's story is profiled in the book, Execution's Doorstep: True Stories of the Innocent and Near Damned.

By the numbers

* Number of death row inmates in the United States as of January 2008: 3,309

Of them, half are in the following states:

California (667); Florida (397); Texas (373); Pennsylvania (228)

* Number of death row inmates in Utah: 10

* Number of countries worldwide that have the death penalty: 60

* Number of executions in 2007 worldwide: 1,252

Of those, 80 percent were in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.

SOURCES: Utah Department of Corrections, and Web sites for Death Penalty Information Center and Amnesty International.