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What I survived

Getting Jnr Home - P9

09 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What recent development occurred in Jnr's appeal case?

0.031 - 9.433 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And the judge actually pushed back on it. He was like, so you're telling me that if we got an innocent person in prison, then because the case, the finality case is done, it happened 25 years ago, it doesn't matter anymore?

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18.02 - 40.766 Jack Lawrence

Hello, and welcome back to One Minute Remaining. My name is Jack Lawrence, the host and creator of the show. It was only just recently that we wrapped up the story of Evaristo Salas Jr., convicted of murder at 15, now 42. With less than three years on his sentence to serve, he continues to try to clear his name. Well, today is a quick catch-up, as Jr.

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40.986 - 44.55 Jack Lawrence

recently had a development in his appeal with the federal courts.

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49.576 - 74.993 Evaristo Salas Jr.

how have you been buddy what's been happening uh pretty been uh pretty much been the same uh i would i've been training for this uh wildland firefighter job for the last couple couple weeks well a couple months actually two months now yesterday we did our little uh physical training where we had to do three miles in 45 minutes and we had we couldn't run we had to walk with the 45 pound pack on our back so i got it done in 33 minutes oh there you go yeah it was pretty grueling though you know

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75.209 - 87.287 Evaristo Salas Jr.

I mean, I had been training for like two months now, so I've been running a lot. I've been doing a lot of exercise. I do a lot of cardio anyways, but I kind of upped it a little more so I can kind of be prepared for it. I'm glad I did because it was definitely a task.

87.807 - 90.652 Jack Lawrence

So how many guys go for those positions?

91.112 - 99.765 Evaristo Salas Jr.

So altogether, there's going to be about 15 of us trained, and there's only about maybe 13 or 14 positions. So we'll see how it goes.

100.488 - 105.954 Jack Lawrence

Fair enough. And then, so if you do get in, do you do regular training and stuff like that as well?

106.194 - 124.034 Evaristo Salas Jr.

Well, yeah. As soon as they hire me on crew, which they may do next week or the week after, we're pretty much just waiting for that because I'm done with everything. The other class isn't done yet, but we're done with everything. And if I get on that crew, then before fire season starts about May, depending on the year, sometimes earlier, sometimes a little bit later.

Chapter 2: How has Jnr been preparing for his potential job as a wildland firefighter?

208.218 - 232.403 Jack Lawrence

yeah i mean that that's the whole thing is that people on the outside take this sort of stuff for granted because we've grown up around it but you 15 years old you were moved away from all that stuff and because i mean i remember you know when i was a kid we didn't have the internet so i mean you know i remember when it first came in and but for you i suppose it's it's all foreign yeah it's definitely all foreign and then i i had when i worked out i had this job in the ci and i worked my way up all the way to uh

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232.703 - 247.643 Evaristo Salas Jr.

to working in the office as a clerk, as an inventory clerk. So they gave me access to the newer programs, you know, Word and Excel, those kind of things, and then other programs that we're doing. I had to learn that on-the-job kind of experience. I had books on the side that I would read. Other people would help me.

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248.504 - 261.462 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And then they had programs years ago at Walla Walla, like Photoshop, you know, Illustrator. I tried to take those as much as I could, but the problem with that is that in Washington State Penitentiary, there's so much lockdowns and riots and stabbings. You can't

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261.779 - 283.686 Evaristo Salas Jr.

function because you're always on lockdown i mean these are 30 day lockdown 40 day lockdowns they do sweeps take people to the hole and it's just it's just you can't really function under that mostly everything came from books every single thing i i've learned about out there it came from books you know so so you've read a lot since you've been incarcerated yeah i mean i i got a love for reading you know i mean like no other you know i got an appetite for

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283.902 - 298.783 Evaristo Salas Jr.

I studied, like, Western philosophy. I just love philosophy. And then I went off from Western philosophy to, you know, religion, the whole history of religion, you know, the beginning of Christianity all the way up. And then I read a little bit of Islamic history. and then Buddhist.

299.243 - 313.616 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And I read like, I spent like two or three years just reading, studying Buddhist books and Samurais and Eastern culture. And it was just a beautiful culture. And then I kind of just bounced around and just, you know, uh, read a lot of wisdom books and I loved it. I'm strange because I was the type of person that would love to just read a textbook.

313.756 - 326.667 Evaristo Salas Jr.

I don't even know where that comes from, but I could literally sit there and just read it. Like when I was a kid, I used to just read through the science book and just, I just got a lot of, a lot of non-useful information that I roll around with in my mind. So I'm

327.524 - 333.073 Jack Lawrence

That's most people in life, though, I think, mate. Most people have just got useless facts in their heads, really.

333.674 - 349.039 Evaristo Salas Jr.

Yeah, exactly. It was funny, too. For years, I used to... So they would allow you to kite the light there, and you would get, like, you know, pick a subject. So I'd say, okay, I want to... And I studied all, like, Mesoamerican history, American history. I studied all that stuff until, like, there was really nothing to read no more. I already pretty much knew it all.

Chapter 3: What challenges does Jnr face in adapting to modern technology?

418.786 - 433.941 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And then I was like, okay, well, home building, building houses. They had a program here called Home Builders. I took that course, but it was only like a six-month to eight-month course. It was great. I loved it. We actually built this house, a little mini house. It was a little shop and everything from top to bottom.

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434.714 - 449.018 Evaristo Salas Jr.

But the problem after that, there's nothing more to do, so I know I was going to forget it. So I was like, well, I got into computer programming. They have no classes on that at all here in this prison, but I could get books.

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449.378 - 465.102 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And so the job that I had, they had books on computer programming, and I had this one guy that kind of knew all that stuff, and so I was kind of just watching what he did and asking him questions and then trying to figure all these things out. And then I was, like, I was talking to one of my friends. He had a guy now. He did, like, 20-some years.

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465.142 - 483.269 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And he got into networking and computer refurnishing and all that kind of stuff. And he's like, look, he goes, unless you want to spend hours in front of a computer just writing computer code, which is cool, but, I mean, it's pretty boring, you know what I mean? So why don't you get into kind of networking and building the computer networks and all that?

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483.289 - 499.11 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And I was like, the problem is I don't got any books, you know, and they're really expensive. He goes, man, I got a whole stack of books. Matter of fact, I'll send you all these books. And so he sent me three books. One's, they're actually the textbooks on how to become certified in it. And so they're pretty, I mean, heavy books or textbooks.

499.13 - 517.825 Evaristo Salas Jr.

So I started studying that and I was thinking, well, I want to get into that because it's universal. So it's pretty much the same in every country. I literally go and travel the world. And, you know, the network is the same. You know, the computers are kind of the same. And so that's what I've been studying right now. But when I got out here, I haven't touched the book for like four months.

517.905 - 519.447 Evaristo Salas Jr.

I got to get back into it, you know, so.

519.687 - 524.452 Jack Lawrence

Yeah. You mentioned traveling. What's the situation going to be like for you when you do get out with travel?

524.813 - 527.515 Evaristo Salas Jr.

Well, the hope is, so I still have my stuff. We're still fighting in the courts.

Chapter 4: How has Jnr's reading shaped his understanding of philosophy and history?

787.45 - 796.02 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And the judge actually pushed back on it. He was like, so you're telling me that if we've got an innocent person in prison, then because the case, the finality case is done, it happened 25 years ago, it doesn't matter anymore?

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796.44 - 796.921 Jack Lawrence

Oh, I love that.

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796.941 - 809.522 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And so it was questioned, like, yeah, they hit him back. You know, they kind of pushed back. And then the other judge was like, so isn't it ironic that you're telling us now not to believe disinformant, but he was your, you know, your star.

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809.562 - 811.063 Jack Lawrence

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

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811.083 - 829.423 Evaristo Salas Jr.

Yeah, yeah, it was obvious, they were hitting him back, and he was like, well, well, you know, yeah, and then the other judge hit him hard with that, the other judge goes, so, so basically, the response of the prosecutor, when he, when he responded to our, our brief, he responded by saying that disinformant is not trustworthy, he's this, he's a whole two or three pages of how terrible this disinformant is,

829.893 - 845.503 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And then he listed every crime that he'd been convicted of. This guy was one of the backbones of their case. Exactly. So he starts naming it off, and the judge goes, oh, he goes, what did you convict him? And then he kind of, the prosecutor started kind of to ask, he goes, no, no, I got a list right here. So he started naming all these things. And he goes, so when did this start to happen?

845.523 - 861.612 Evaristo Salas Jr.

Did it start happening after he testified? And then the prosecutor goes, oh, yeah, that's good. And he goes, no, the judge stopped him, right? He said, no, no, no, it didn't, because... Apparently, for your own paperwork, he started months and years before he even testified that he already had these crimes. So now you're telling me that he's telling a lie now? And he goes, what about the judge?

861.632 - 875.766 Evaristo Salas Jr.

He goes, did the judge believe the informant before? And then the prosecutor goes, yes, he believed him before. And he goes, no, no, no, hold up. I'll tell you what the judge says. The judge says, he goes, I don't know if he was telling the truth then and lying now or lying now and telling the truth then. He goes, I don't know what the truth is.

876.106 - 907.559 Evaristo Salas Jr.

And he goes to the prosecutor, he goes, you mean to tell me that we have somebody in prison for 25 years now? and the judge doesn't even know what the truth is. For me, that was encouraging because the judge prior to that, the one in Yakima County, it was like he didn't even hear us, like we weren't even there, and the prosecutor was pretty much sitting, you know, like he was so confident.

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