Rachel and her husband were a young married couple who had good jobs and had never been involved in crime.  One evening after work, Rachel shot and killed her husband in their home from a distance of six to ten feet.  She said she thought he was going to beat her again.  That was the only reason Rachel had for killing him.  She cried every time I interviewed her in the women's jail. She cried during the trial. She cried when she testified.  There was never any other reason she gave for killing him.

If the jury convicted her of second degree murder, she would go to prison for 15 years to life.  If they convicted her of involuntary manslaughter, the sentence would be a year in the county jail. The jury chose involuntary manslaughter, and because she had been in custody since the day of the shooting, at the end of the trial she had only 30 more days to serve in the county jail.

The day she was to be released, I received a call from a sheriff deputy at the women's jail asking me to go there because Rachel was refusing to leave. Her family had driven to the jail to pick her up, but she wasn't going.  I talked to her for about 30 minutes but she wasn't going. Finally,  I had a meeting with her family and the jail deputies and it was decided that three of us, her uncle, a deputy and myself would carry her out of her cell, through the jail, to the backseat of the family car, where she would be seated between two husky male family members. There she would be restrained as the car with locked doors drove off. She writhed and cried and struggled and screamed as we carried her out of the jail to the waiting car. I have never forgotten and will never forget my last contact with Rachel Salinas.