Utah mother Kouri Richins has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering her husband by poisoning him with fentanyl.
Judge Richard Mrazik imposed the life-without-parole sentence Wednesday in a Summit County courtroom after a jury found Richins guilty in March of aggravated murder and several related felonies.
Prosecutors had urged the judge to impose the maximum punishment, arguing that Richins killed her husband, Eric Richins, for money and did so inside their home while their three children were present, according to ABC News.
Kouri Richins' Sentencing
The 35-year-old real estate agent and mother of three was convicted of killing her husband in March 2022 by serving him a cocktail at their home near Park City that was later found to contain about five times a lethal dose of fentanyl.
Investigators testified that toxicology tests showed extremely high levels of the synthetic opioid in Eric Richins' system and that no other medical cause could explain his sudden death.
Jurors also found Richins guilty of attempted aggravated murder for an earlier incident on Valentine's Day 2022, when prosecutors said she tried to poison her husband with a fentanyl-laced sandwich.
In addition, she was convicted of multiple counts of insurance fraud and forgery tied to life insurance policies and financial documents involving her husband.
According to court records and trial testimony, Richins had secretly obtained several life insurance policies on her husband totaling nearly 2 million dollars and was facing mounting personal and business debts.
Prosecutors argued that she viewed Eric Richins' death as a way to resolve her financial problems and continue an extramarital relationship, the New York Times reported.
The case drew national attention after it emerged that Richins had written and self-published a children's book on grief, titled "Are You With Me?", about coping with the death of a loved one, roughly a year after her husband died.
Prosecutors said she promoted the book publicly while already under investigation for his killing, a contrast they described to the jury as evidence of planning and deception.
Richins was arrested in 2023 and had pleaded not guilty to all charges, maintaining through her attorneys that Eric Richins might have taken drugs unknowingly and that the state lacked direct evidence of poisoning.
The jury deliberated for about three hours before returning guilty verdicts on all major counts, and Wednesday's sentence means she will spend the rest of her life in a Utah state prison, as per CBS News.
Originally published on Lawyer Herald
