A Tennessee man who plotted with his high school sweetheart to kill her husband amid their seven-month-long affair that involved her lying about being abused was sentenced to 62 years in prison this week.
Darrin Lopez shot American Airlines executive Jamie Faith to death in October 2020 while he was on a walk in his Dallas, Texas-area neighborhood with his wife Jennifer Faith who, unbeknownst to her husband, was involved with Lopez at the time.
Jennifer Faith had, in fact, encouraged Lopez to kill her husband in an elaborate scheme, that included her sending him stock photos to support the lie that he was abusing her physically and sexually and creating fake email accounts to pose as worried friends, FOX 4 reported.
She pleaded guilty to murder-for-hire and was sentenced to life in prison in 2021, with a judge calling her “pure evil.”
Before she was caught, Faith kept up her charade, going on the news and talking about how “devastated” she was by her husband’s murder, and hoping his killer would be brought to justice.
“It’s been horrible. Devastating. I teeter between completely heartbroken and completely devastated every day,” she said to FOX 4 in 2020 before her scheme was uncovered.
She told police after the murder that a stranger pulled up and opened fire and then tried to abduct her.
Lopez argued that he had been “duped” by Faith, who he said turned him into a “monster.”
His defense also argued that PTSD and a traumatic brain injury from his time in the Army played a role in his decision-making.
“He was duped, and when someone is duped, it means someone didn’t know what they were reading wasn’t real,” his defense lawyer said. “She created all the information.”
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Lopez testified, “At the time, I was thinking I was a noble soldier that did my job. I did what I was trained to do. I protected people. I kept them from a monster.”
He said he was “devastated” when he found out Faith had lied to him about her husband’s abuse. “I took an innocent life!” he admitted through tears.
But the prosecution argued that was an active participant in the murder scheme, not a victim, and that he had “many other options” that he didn’t take if he believed she was being abused, according to FOX 4.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re going to choose to kill a man, if you’re going to end his life, if you’re going to choose the time and the place where you end his life like Darrin did, then you better have a damn good reason,” prosecutor Brandi Mitchell told the jury.
However, it took less than an hour for the jury to find him guilty before sentencing him to 62 years.
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“It’s tough on us when we put our hearts into these cases. We believe in our clients and then a result like this happens,” defense attorney Juan Sanchez told FOX 4, adding that they plan to appeal the verdict.
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