Third District Court Judge Richard Mrazik granted a request to extend Kouri Richins’ trial by another week to accommodate for what’s expected to be a robust case featuring extensive testimony and evidence.
Summit County prosecutors and defense attorneys Kathy Nester and Wendy Lewis met for a pretrial conference on Thursday morning to discuss several matters, including motions to suppress, evidentiary hearings, jury selection logistics and concerns over the trial length.
“One of the things we talked about with the state is as we’re all preparing, we are starting to feel some anxiety about finishing this case in 12 days. We do anticipate putting on a fairly robust defense, which will involve days of testimony from witnesses. I mean, we may have as many as 20 witnesses, maybe less. And of course, Ms. Richins has a constitutional right to testify. Should she decide to exercise that, we anticipate her testimony would be quite lengthy,” Nester said.
The Summit County Attorney’s Office also said it felt anxious about whether it could make its case in eight days.
So Mrazik moved jury selection up to the week of April 21 instead of April 28. Then, the jury trial would be held Monday through Thursday during the weeks of April 28 and May 5, 12 and 19. The jury could also decide it wants to deliberate through Memorial Day week.
The two sides agreed to adhere to a strict filing timeline to ensure all documents are in order by the time of the hearings scheduled throughout the spring, and they have been sharing information about potential jury questionnaires. The final version is expected to be part of that, and jurors will need time to fill out and return the sheets.
The questionnaire would be completed by Jan. 31 and would be approved during a pretrial conference in February. Mrazik questioned how many people would receive the questionnaire. The judge estimated the jury pool is about 3,000 people and said he expected about half to be returned.
Another percentage would be eliminated based on their responses, leaving several hundred potential jurors. The two sides were still undecided about how many people they wanted to call each day.
“I think the goal would be to send enough out that we have buffer for a significant number of strikes for cause rather than send out two rounds, because I think that’s more complicated. And so I think we just would prefer upping the number we send the questionnaires to rather than going through a second round,” Nester said.
Third District Court Presiding Judge Laura Scott shut down in-person jury selection last month, and said the pool must come exclusively from Summit County. The attorneys on both sides argued it should be expanded to Salt Lake County as well, but Scott seemingly ruled jurors from the Wasatch Front would be significantly inconvenienced by the arrangement.
Prosecutors and the defense said they plan to file an “emergency petition” to appeal the decision. Mrazik said he couldn’t find any examples in Utah in which jurors were pulled from two counties.
“I endorsed your stipulation, and we may be swimming upstream on that one. … If you want all from Salt Lake, that’s a motion to change venue,” Mrazik said.
Neither the County Attorney’s Office nor the defense indicated it plans to go that route. The next in-person hearing was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 23 to determine which evidence may be excluded.
Kouri faces nine felony charges stemming from the death of her husband, Eric Richins, including aggravated murder and attempted criminal homicide.
Eric died of a fentanyl overdose in March 2022. Prosecutors allege Kouri poisoned him with a Moscow Mule cocktail laced with fentanyl, and that she attempted to do it a month earlier with a drug-laced sandwich on Valentine’s Day. The County Attorney’s Office said Kouri felt trapped in her marriage and had a financial motive to kill her husband.
Kouri Richins and her family have maintained her innocence.