But as he sat behind prison walls for years, he prayed every day that he’d be released and that the court system would recognize his innocence.
He says he never picked up a gun as he drove his truck along a Midvale road in December 2013. He didn’t press it to his wife’s head — and he didn’t fire the single bullet that killed Shannon Lopez.
But police and prosecutors believed he did. And a 3rd District jury agreed in 2015, finding Komasquin Lopez guilty of first-degree felony murder.
Lopez was sentenced to prison. His first parole hearing was set in 2039, so far in the future that it was practically a life sentence for the now-48-year-old man who previously worked as a corrections officer in Utah and Florida.