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Chapter 1: What led to Evaristo Salas Jr.'s conviction for murder?
I made a decision. I didn't get down, which is I didn't get fired. I didn't get involved. I stand by that decision. Whatever you guys decide, I accept. And they were like, all right, well, you're expound. That means that whenever we see you, we're going to deal with you. I come out, I look to my father, and he had this look on his face.
And yet, it was the look of a man that looked like he was about to see his son devoured by lions.
She went and got the truck out without permission, had it washed, cleaned, whatever, and sold it the next day.
But that boy shouldn't be in jail. There's too many things to doubt on that case. It's too much.
Hello and welcome back to One Minute Remaining. My name is Jack Lawrence, the host and creator of this show. Today is part six and the final part for now of my chat with Evaristo Salas Jr., the man who was convicted of murder at just 15. Now in his 40s and with less than three years to go on a 30-year sentence, Jr. continues to fight to clear his name. As we know, Evaristo Salas Jr.
is found guilty of murder, shooting Jose Aurelio twice in the head. The judge would tell him that if he could give him a life sentence, he would, but he can't, so instead he sentences him to the maximum that he possibly can, 30 years. Junior, a child, is now headed to a men's prison, a place where gangs rule with fear and violence.
The population segregates themselves by race, and predators prey on the weak. I'm sure most people listening to this right now would understand that prisons are not safe places. But to really spell out how dangerous it can be for a youngster in a men's prison, shortly after a 16-year-old was booked into Florida's Polk County Jail in February of 2012,
His three cellmates punched him, whipped him and nearly strangled him with a pillowcase. They would then urinate on him, spray his face with cleaning fluid and strip him naked before wrapping a sheet around his neck, tying the other end around the window bar and pulling it so tight he would lose consciousness.
They would repeat this attack three times over the course of several hours without jail guards on regular rounds ever noticing. So now let's try and place ourselves in Junior's position. Take yourself back to when you were just 15 and try to imagine that you're being led into a giant building surrounded by fences, guard towers and barbed wire.
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Chapter 2: How did Junior adapt to life in a men's prison at such a young age?
In fact, we know that the United States leads the industrialised world in the number and percentage of children it locks up in juvenile detention facilities, with over 60,000 children in such facilities in 2011. The US also sends an extraordinary number of these children, just like Junior, to adult jails and prisons. In fact... In 2011, more than 95,000.
An accused killer now 16 years old has been certified to stand trial as an adult.
Paul Gingrich was only 12 when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. Gingrich is believed to be the youngest person in Indiana ever sentenced to prison as an adult.
I'm Colt Lundy, and I'm 15 years old. It's overwhelming. I got 30 years to spend five for probation.
The verdict reads, we, the jury, find the defendant Jacobine guilty of first-degree murder. Guilty at 16 years old. The mandatory sentence at that time, because he was tried as an adult, life in prison with no possibility of parole.
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Yet again, Junior would find himself in a new segregated section with the rest of the juveniles that were being bussed in from around the county until once more, they're on the move again to yet another facility in segregation until they hit 18.
We were there for almost 18 months and then decided they're going to transfer all the juveniles to a level four prison and sent us to a place called Qualum Bay Correctional Centre, which at that time was known as Gladiator School. because of all the stabbings and riots and all the terrible prison stuff that goes there. Everybody ever talked, it was like, oh, this place is horrible.
You know, it's just battle all the time. It's war and all that kind of stuff. But they put us there, but they segregated us from the adults still. As soon as we turned 18, they just threw us into the general population. I was still young, so when I went into the general population, it was the same kind of environment. It's a level four prison, so it was even worse. It wasn't a receding center.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Junior face when segregated from adult inmates?
That this is going to drag out 30 plus years. I couldn't see past it. I became angry at the system. I became angry at everybody that was around me. And I just, you know, whatever I could do, I didn't care. I remember I used to say this all the time. Well, if they're going to have me in here for something I didn't do, then I might as well make it worth it. They did me wrong. Nobody cares.
It doesn't matter. I go to what I know. You know, Fod got angry and I was part of the gangsta, so it just... You know, it went into all that. So I fought a number of times and I ended up staying in an abandoned hole for years. And that in itself was a mental journey.
Yeah. I mean, isolation is one of the worst things that you can do to a person.
Yeah, I mean, and I felt it. I'd get out maybe for a week here and then get into it with somebody or get attacked or that kind of stuff and then go back. And there was one moment where I kind of felt like my mind was almost teetering and it scared me. In the hole, you don't really, you can't talk to nobody because you get in trouble, and you can't sign with nobody because you get in trouble.
So you're basically, it's just you in a room, and nothing else really exists. Every little noise would kind of send me into kind of an anxiety attack. And then nightmares came, racing thoughts, all the things that are classic, you know, basically you're going insane. They come actually to check on you. They have these people that come check on you. They don't really check on you.
They come and ask you. They're a psychiatrist. They come and ask you, are you doing all right? You can be on the edge of insanity. You can be going crazy. You're going to tell them, I'm fine. Because if you tell them, I'm going crazy, or something's happening to me, or I'm starting to have these weird thoughts, everybody on the tier is going to see that. And they're going to label you as weak.
It's just a weird kind of prison thing. I don't know what it is. And so everybody just suffers in their own way. But you're all going to eventually go insane. And I've seen that. You can know if they're going to survive two or three years because they were long since in those places. That first year is usually when they go crazy. And I would see it all the time.
These guys would just start screaming, just start smearing feces on themselves, you know, screaming at things that are not there, yelling for their moms. I mean, it was just, it was a constant. every day I've seen that kind of stuff. It was horrible. The way I did it was when I started feeling that I was heading that direction, I was getting too close to that, I started just reading.
And that's why I got into a lot of Eastern philosophy. And that stuff really helped me. I got into this little discussion, almost an argument with a psychiatrist because I told him, I said, do you think isolation breeds insanity? And he wouldn't answer me even though he knew that, you know, I was taking a shot.
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Chapter 4: How did Junior navigate gang dynamics while in prison?
So you tell the gang members that you don't want to be part of this gang anymore and they essentially say, okay, fine. You said you make yourself a target. How do you avoid getting attacked?
There was a certain amount of respect because I'd already dared and known that I'd spent so much time in the hole. They were going to give me a little leeway. But I knew by saying that that there was only so much eventually they were going to attack me. That's what I figured. Once I did that, I had already crossed that line. Some of them knew about it, not all.
It's not like I went out there and then every single person, you don't have to talk to every single person. You talk to one or two people that are in charge. You kind of explain to them. They were all right with that. They were just, okay, just do your thing, you know what I mean, all that kind of stuff, you know what I mean.
But when I stopped, you know, doing their little program, and what I mean by that is so they almost have a system of indoctrination where it's education. They have these little things with education, that kind of stuff, you know, things you have to do in prison, certain rules you have to follow. So I stopped shaking up with them. I stopped kind of talking to them.
Shaking up means like shaking their hands and all that kind of stuff. I stopped going to their little education programs that they have in the yards, that kind of stuff. And this was a real violation. And so maybe they assumed that I was going to go keep on going with those kind of things. And then I started kind of bucking the system.
People that are coming in, I'm trying to explain to them to try to stay out of prison rather than stay in prison. which was a real definite no-no. Um, I took a couple classes that they considered, uh, what they considered dropout classes or they're basically classes of doing better, bettering yourself, that kind of stuff.
And they, they don't like these kind of classes because they kind of take away gang members and kind of reform them and they don't want to be gang members no more. So they don't like you. So they basically said, these classes right here are classes you cannot go to. And I knew what I was doing. I was like, eventually they're going to, they're going to do what they're going to do.
You'll make an example. I mean, that kind of stuff, but it never happened, you know? Um, I just continued what I was doing. There was times where I thought it was going to come, where they were like, a couple times they came up and talked to me, look man, you need a program, you ain't doing this, you ain't doing that.
Some of the guys I knew for years, who they were, I think they were to a certain extent were trying to make excuses for me because they were always coming to talk and be like, look, you know, just shake their hands. You know what I mean? You got to just stand with us. You got it. You know what I mean?
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Chapter 5: What was the impact of the new law on juvenile offenders in prison?
I said, well, we're going to send you to a prison where you don't have to worry about that anymore. It's a prison yard where there's no gang members. And I was like, I didn't really kind of believe that they would do that, but they were like, yeah, we're going to send you to Arrow Heights, which is a non-active yard. That was almost, that was a gift, you know what I mean?
Because I felt that, well, any other prison I went to, I would have been probably attacked, you know, for making that choice. And I came here, and once I got here, that's when I started. The gang threat is not here anymore. They're all just ex-gang members or people trying to get out of the gangs.
So none of the gang kind of politics exists here at this prison because everybody that's any affiliation or active in any kind of gang is not here. So it's all just people who are not gang members, and they have a number of programs and jobs you can take. And so as soon as I got here, that's what I did. I spent the better part of the seven years that I've been here just working.
I took Toastmasters. I became a part of the club there. And I would talk to these people like these drug addicts, well, they're not drug addicts, but they're reformed drug addicts, I guess you could say. Talk to the guys that are just coming in, speaking about how it changed my life, that kind of stuff, and how it's a benefit we start doing better.
And I started getting involved in all these kind of reentry programs and trying to build these gang intervention programs. And so that's what I've been doing since I've been here. I started just building on that and bettering myself, taking every program I could possibly take and trying to make up for all those years that were lost when I was lost and all that gang stuff.
When you left the gang and you said, you know, I'm out, and then they were moving you to another prison, were you kept sort of in solitary until you left?
Yeah, well, I was already in solitary confinement because I was in that riot that happened. Just because I was a part of that gang, they took me. And they originally said that I was involved, and they had roped me up with all these infractions. But... I was standing with a bunch of group of other guys under a camera.
And because I was standing under that camera, when I went to my ear and I said, look, I know your officer said they see me directly involved, but look, just look at this camera right here. I'm standing right there and laying on the ground when that's going on. And sure enough, they seen it and they dismissed all those infractions. Then they were like, okay, well, we're going to release you.
But then I had to wait in there to get transferred over here. So I didn't actually go back to that actual prison line or prison yard. I went to this one. So I had to wait there to get transferred. So I was three months in that hole over there before they sent me over here.
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