Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What recent decision did the Court of Appeals make regarding Jnr Salas's case?
Hello, this is a call from... Junior. An incarcerated individual at Airway Heights Correction Centre. This call is not private. It will be recorded and may be monitored. You may start the conversation now.
What's going on, buddy? Shoot, man, I got some good news. I know, man. I've seen the article and your sister sent me a message and she's like, have you seen this? Hello and welcome back to One Minute Remaining. My name is Jack Lawrence, the host and creator of this show. Today we have a catch-up with Evaristo Salas Jr. Jr.
was convicted of a murder at just 15 years old and has been fighting to clear his name ever since. After over 27 years of fighting and now in his 40s, Jr. has finally been given an incredible lifeline. So for those who are part of our private Facebook group, which is open to you all right now, you'll know recently I posted an article about a decision that has been made by the Court of Appeals.
A decision that has finally gone in the favour of Junior Salas. So many months ago, Junior and his legal team went back to court with an entire smorgasbord of new evidence that was never made available to his defence team at the time of his initial trial.
Proof that the truck in which the murder had taken place had been not only cleaned but repaired and then sold by the victim's girlfriend just four days after the crime had taken place and before the police had even had a chance to examine the truck for more evidence. As well as the fact that the victim's girlfriend had undergone hypnosis prior to her identifying Junior as the shooter.
As well as this, evidence that not only the lead detective had paid his informant in this case, but also that that informant had then recanted his statement, stating that his evidence was false. Yet still with all of this in front of the judge from Yakima County, he essentially just dismissed it all.
Junior's legal team requested that the judge move to subpoena all three of these individuals so that they could be questioned on all of these matters that had not been disclosed at Junior's original trial. Again, the judge just denied the request. Junior's next move was to appeal this decision and take it to the Court of Appeals.
Three independent judges would sit and listen to both sides' arguments and went away to make their ruling. And just last week, came back not only in Junior's favour but also to call out that previous court's decision and the judge's comments in this ruling as improper.
So I just want to give you the heads up here that Junior's phone line this particular day wasn't great, but we work with what we've got when it comes to the American prison system.
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Chapter 2: What evidence was presented that could impact Jnr Salas's conviction?
So I have the option to actually head to the Yakima County or have a Zoom meeting from here. So I told the lawyer, I said, let me have it here because the transfer over there is just a big old hassle. I'll kind of lose my spot, my job here and even my room or my cell. And that county jail is horrible. So it's like, yeah. Yeah, no, screw that.
And I'm assuming that you won't get a chance to talk though. They're purely just going to be cross-examining these three witnesses. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's the case. I might be able to request, maybe be able to make a statement right before the judge decides what you're going to do, whatever. So I'm going to talk to my lawyers about that's the case. I'm definitely going to try to speak, you know, if they allow me to. I'm not sure if they will, though.
The other thing I think is fantastic is they put a date on this. They said, we need to have an answer by September.
Well, I think that was me and my lawyers spoke about it, too. My lawyers, like, they never do that. Yeah. But my lawyers, like, I'm assuming they did that because you've already been in prison for over 27 years, you know what I mean? I mean... how long are they going to drag this out? The fact that the court of appeals retained jurisdiction over the case is big, too, because they never do that.
They usually allow the trial judge to decide, and then they specifically stated that they're supposed to send that fact-finding information to the court of appeals, and then the court of appeals is going to decide on whether they keep the conviction.
But again, that's the way it should be because all that's going to happen if they were to leave the decision in the hands of that judge in Yakima County, who's no doubt mates with the other judge and everybody else, prosecutors and whatnot, unfortunately, it seems like you don't get a fair decision.
And so for the fact that they're holding onto it and they're saying, well, no, we'll make the decision. You do all the work and the investigation, send us the findings and we will make the ruling.
Yeah, I mean, that was like the extra thing that they added on. That's what we were hoping for. And the fact that they maintained it, they basically, like I said, they basically just gave us everything. And they also kind of, they highlighted the statements that seemed improper, what the judge was saying on the order and the ruling.
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Chapter 3: How did the court respond to the new evidence presented by Jnr's legal team?
And then they remand for a new trial. And so this is up to the prosecution. That's why I thought if they were to actually exonerate me, then I'd probably just be released. And I don't know if they can even do that. Their court kills couldn't even do that. I think the only option they have is to vacate the conviction and remand for a new trial.
Because the whole system is based on your due process rights and all that kind of stuff, you know, and whether you had a... a fair trial. I mean, so it's a strange, you know, part of the American system, you know, so.
So, I mean, say, obviously, best case scenario, they come back and vacate the conviction and order for a new trial. You know, obviously, the prosecutor, we would hope, would turn around and say, well, you know, we're not going to retry this case. Obviously, that's brilliant. You get to go home. But obviously, ultimately, we need here an exoneration.
So then once that conviction is vacated and you're out of there, would your plan be then with your team to go for that exoneration?
Yeah, our next step would be somehow, some way, you know, go for that exoneration in one form or another. That's what really matters to me. I mean, for them to just vacate my conviction, dismiss it. they're not taking any responsibility for it. It's just, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, you're out of here. 27 years is gone, I'll never get that back.
But just having it on record that I was exonerated, that would be my ultimate goal right there. The exoneration would be acknowledged by their part, saying that we wrongfully convicted you. It's just another step that would give me a certain amount of, I would say, justice. When someone does something wrong to you,
and they acknowledge that they did that wrong to you, that gives you closure to a certain extent. And I think that's what that would do for me.
Of course, as we've learnt by now, you never want to count your chickens before they hatch when it comes to the American legal system. But this decision certainly gives hope that finally people are looking at these incredibly glaring issues in this case and saying that they need to be addressed and people must explain themselves. So we're going to take a short break.
But when we come back, Junior recently had an experience that he hasn't had in over 27 years. And I want to share it with you next. So as you probably already know if you've been following this story, Junior is in a work camp.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the subpoena for witnesses in Jnr's case?
And so I was heading up to this place and the air is blowing in my face and I can already smell the mountain air and the pines and the forest is getting thicker and thicker as we get closer and closer. And it's just a wavy, windy road and we're going pretty fast and the air starts to get fresher and cooler. It was kind of a hot day, but the air was cool.
And so here we are, we pull over to the side and do our little safety brief that we always do. And what's expected, what we need to watch about, we get dressed up, we get our fire gear or our cutting packs on. So we head up the side of this, I mean, this Mount Spokane, it's just steep. It's like, you know, a 50% grade. And it's like, you're climbing almost most of the time.
So these crews use bladder bags full of water.
This helps them ensure that the fires don't get out of control. Junior is watching a tree burn as he suddenly runs out of water and needs to head off to the creek to refill it. And this would lead Junior to a moment he hasn't experienced in decades. Complete solitude and peace.
I ran out of water, and I was thinking, well, this tree's still going up, so I figured I'd have to race down to this creek. I ran down the ridge and into this creek, which is pretty far away from the main route. This creek, it was beautiful. It was clear. It was fresh. It was cold.
I couldn't take as much time as I wanted to, but I didn't need to because those moments felt like, you know, it was eternity. And I kind of took it all in, kind of dipped my hands into it, splashed it on my face. And I sat there and I just kind of enjoyed the moment and soldiered in. And I remember thinking at that moment, like, you know, all these years I spent looking up here.
And so when I went down and experienced that, you know, I kind of just listened to it. And it makes you not only lose track of time, but almost forget all the past suffering and struggles that you've been through. And I took it all in and I enjoyed it. And I made sure to remind myself, you know, what it felt like to kind of experience both sides of that.
The other side, from inside a prison, looking up at that mountain and hoping that, you know, or wondering what it would be like to be amongst the trails and the forest of that area and that actually be there. It was a beautiful feeling that came over me. It was a feeling of excitement. And just to be able to enjoy that by myself.
I'm so used to being surrounded by things I can't do and being able to see the things I can't do. In prison, they have all these red lines everywhere that pretty much state out of bounds, big black or red letters saying that you cannot go there. They're just everywhere. You go there, you get infracted and all that kind of stuff.
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