Kouri Richins Trial: Delays, Verdict, and Sentencing

The Kouri Richins trial date was set for February 10, 2026, when jury selection began in Utah’s Third District Court in Summit County, with testimony starting February 23 and a verdict returned on March 16, 2026. The jury found her guilty on all five counts, including aggravated murder for poisoning her husband Eric Richins with fentanyl, and Judge Richard Mrazik sentenced her to life in prison without the possibility of parole on May 13, 2026.¹

Why the Trial Took Nearly Three Years

Eric Richins died on March 4, 2022. Kouri Richins was arrested and charged in May 2023. Trial did not begin until February 2026. Several things stretched the calendar.

After the preliminary hearing on August 27, 2024, the court tentatively scheduled trial for late April through May 2025.² That date slipped. In May 2024, one of Richins’ defense attorneys withdrew over an ethical conflict, and new counsel had to be appointed and brought up to speed.³

The larger source of delay was a running fight over venue. The defense argued repeatedly that intense media coverage made it impossible to seat a fair jury in Summit County and asked to move the trial to Salt Lake County. Judge Mrazik denied the motions. He also denied a request to expand the jury pool across county lines, concluding that Utah law restricts jury selection to residents of a single county. The Utah Supreme Court affirmed both rulings in a formal opinion issued April 24, 2025.⁴ The defense then asked the Supreme Court to intervene again, and on June 6, 2025, the court declined to hear the appeal.³

One week after that, on June 13, 2025, Judge Mrazik locked in the final schedule: jury selection on February 10, 2026, and testimony on February 23, 2026.⁵ A last-minute defense request to delay the trial further was denied.⁶

The case was also narrowed before trial. In November 2024, Judge Mrazik severed a set of mortgage fraud charges from the homicide proceedings. Those financial allegations were later refiled as a separate case in June 2025, expanded to 26 counts covering mortgage fraud, forgery, issuing bad checks, money laundering, and communications fraud. That case remained pending with no trial date as of mid-2026.⁷

The Charges That Went to Trial

Richins faced five counts in the homicide case, filed in the Third District Court, Summit County, Utah, under case number 231500139:⁴

Aggravated murder
Attempted aggravated murder, tied to a Valentine’s Day 2022 incident in which Eric allegedly broke out in hives and blacked out after eating a sandwich Kouri gave him⁸
Two counts of insurance fraud
Forgery⁹

How the Trial Unfolded

Jury selection ran from February 10, 2026. Testimony opened on February 23, 2026, and the trial had been scheduled to run through late March. It ended earlier than expected after closing arguments, with the verdict on March 16, 2026, after roughly three weeks of proceedings.¹

Judge Mrazik shaped what jurors would hear. He ruled the prosecution’s behavioral threat assessment expert inadmissible in the case-in-chief, allowing that testimony only as potential rebuttal. He blocked a proposed domestic violence expert because prosecutors had not established a sufficient foundation. He did allow a handwriting expert to testify.¹⁰ He also opened jury selection to local media, overriding a standard virtual-selection order.⁶

What the Prosecution Presented

Prosecutors argued that Kouri Richins mixed illicit fentanyl into a Moscow mule and a lemon drop shot she prepared for Eric on the evening before he was found dead in the couple’s Kamas home on March 4, 2022. The autopsy found fentanyl in his blood at roughly five times a lethal dose, ingested orally.¹¹

The state’s case rested on three pillars. The first was supply. The Richins family’s longtime housecleaner, Carmen Lauber, testified that she bought pills from a dealer at a Draper gas station on Kouri’s behalf on February 11, February 26, and March 9, 2022. Cell phone data placed both Lauber’s and the dealer’s phones at that gas station on those dates.¹² Both Lauber and the dealer received immunity to testify.¹³

The second was motive. A forensic accountant testified that by March 2022, Richins owed roughly $7.5 million to various lenders and was paying about $80,000 per month in debt service, and that her real estate company had bounced more than $300,000 in checks to contractors by late 2021. Between 2015 and 2017, prosecutors said, Richins took out four life insurance policies on Eric totaling nearly $2 million in benefits. After his death she received $1.4 million and, according to the accountant, spent every dollar on debt by September 2022, ending with $802 in her account.¹⁴

The third was consciousness of guilt. Digital forensics showed that after Richins’ original phone was seized, she used a new device to search phrases including “can fbi find deleted messages,” “what is a lethal.dose.of.fetanayl,” and “if someone is poisned what does it go down on the death certificate as.”¹² A six-page handwritten document found in her Summit County Jail cell in September 2023, headed “Walk the Dog!!,” was introduced as what prosecutors called a script instructing her brother to give false testimony tying Eric to fentanyl he had supposedly bought in Mexico. Richins said it was an excerpt from a fictional book.¹⁵

What the Defense Did

The defense team, led by Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis, rested without calling a single witness.¹⁶ In closing, Lewis told jurors the state could not explain how the fentanyl was actually administered: “They cannot tell you how Eric ingested that fentanyl… They haven’t done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence.”¹² The defense emphasized that no fentanyl was found in the bedroom, the copperware used for the drinks was never tested, and the death certificate listed the manner of death as unknown. It attacked Lauber’s credibility, pointed to her immunity deal and criminal history, and suggested Eric may have obtained drugs on his own given his travel to Mexico and chronic pain.¹⁷

The Verdict

On March 16, 2026, the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on all five counts. Jurors specifically found that both the murder and the attempted murder were committed for financial benefit.¹²

Sentencing on May 13, 2026

Sentencing was held on May 13, 2026, which would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday. The defense sought a delay citing a scheduling conflict; Judge Mrazik denied the request, noting the two months already provided and the harm further delay could cause the couple’s minor children.¹⁸

Judge Mrazik imposed life without the possibility of parole on the aggravated murder count. He added consecutive sentences of five years to life for attempted aggravated murder, one to 15 years on each of the two insurance fraud counts, and up to five years for forgery. Prosecutors had not sought the death penalty, a decision made in consultation with Eric’s father and sisters.¹⁹²⁰

Richins spoke for roughly 30 minutes at the hearing, maintained her innocence, and told the court she would appeal: “I’m coming home, not today, not this year, but we’re going to make this right.”²¹

What Comes Next

Richins’ attorneys filed a notice of appeal on May 26, 2026. The case was referred to the Utah Court of Appeals and remained pending as of mid-2026. A motion for a new trial on procedural grounds was expected but had not been filed by June 2026.²²

The separate financial crimes case, with 26 counts filed in June 2025, was still pending without a trial date at the same point.⁷ The couple’s three sons have been in the custody of Eric’s sister Katie Richins-Benson and her husband since Richins’ arrest, with a juvenile court formally awarding custody to Eric’s family in November 2024.²³

1
NBC News. Kouri Richins Murder Trial Verdict
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ABC4. Kouri Richins Complete Timeline in Murder Case
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East Idaho News. A Timeline of the Kouri Richins Case as Jury Selection Gets Underway
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Justia. State v. Richins, 2025 UT 10
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Park Record. Kouri Richins Jury Trial Set for 2026
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KJZ. Jury Selection in Richins Murder Trial Opens Following Motion From Local Media
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Park Record. Kouri Richins Charged With Dozens of Financial Crimes in New Case
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ABC News. Kouri Richins New Charges Attempted Murder
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ABC News. Closing Arguments Murder Trial Kouri Richins
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Court TV. Judge Limits Expert Testimony in Kouri Richins Murder Case
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ABC News. Utah Mom Accused of Fatally Poisoning Husband With Fentanyl
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CNN. Kouri Richins Trial Evidence Conviction
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ABC News. Key Witness Kouri Richins Murder Trial Admits Illicit
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Park Record. Financial Expert Testifies That Kouri Richins Used Money From Life Insurance Policy to Pay Off Growing $7.5 Million Debt
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Salt Lake Tribune. Kouri Richins Trial What to Know
16
Court TV. Kouri Richins Defense Rests Without Calling a Single Witness
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Park Record. Kouri Richins Defense Says Unanswered Questions Will Drive Reasonable Doubt
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KUTV. Court Rejects Last Minute Request to Delay Richins Sentencing
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NewsNation. Kouri Richins Sentenced Husband’s Fentanyl Murder
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KSL. Kouri Richins Sentenced for Murdering Husband, Her Sons Say They Fear Her
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CBS News. Kouri Richins Sentenced Husband’s Murder Fentanyl Laced Cocktail
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KPCW. Kouri Richins Appeals Aggravated Murder Conviction
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People. Where Are Kouri Richins Kids Now