- Judge Richard Mrazik set guidelines for contested expert witnesses in Kouri Richins' trial during a hearing on Wednesday.
- Mrazik determined that Thursday's hearing, at which he will consider what evidence can be admitted at trial, will not be public because juror questionnaires have already been sent.
- The trial for Richins, who is accused of fatally poisoning her husband, begins in February.
PARK CITY — A Utah court judge listened to information Wednesday about expert witnesses and guidelines under which they could be called during the jury trial for Kouri Richins, a Kamas woman accused of killing her husband.
Richins' attorneys requested that Judge Richard Mrazik not permit three expert witnesses to testify, and each of those witnesses appeared at the hearing on Wednesday in case the judge or attorneys had questions. Mrazik did not eliminate the possibility of any witnesses being called, but did say specific circumstances would need to be met for all but Matt Throckmorton, a handwriting expert whom he determined could testify related to whether signatures were likely made by Eric Richins.
The hearing on Wednesday comes about a month before Richins' trial, which will begin with jury selection on Feb. 10. The 35-year-old Kamas mother, former real estate agent and children's book author is charged with aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder, first-degree felonies. She is accused of killing her husband, Eric Richins, in March 2022, by poisoning him with fentanyl. She allegedly also attempted to kill him a month earlier.
Richins is also charged with two counts of insurance fraud, a second-degree felony, and forgery, a third-degree felony, and has a separate case with additional financial charges.
Mrazik will make further determinations regarding what evidence may be admitted at trial during a hearing on Thursday, but he ruled Wednesday that the hearing would be closed to the public after attorneys on both sides agreed it should be.
The judge said jury questionnaires have already been sent and returned, making it hard to determine their exposure to evidentiary information. He said the rulings from the hearing will be made public, but not the attorneys' arguments regarding the evidence.
Expert witness rulings
Molly Amman is a witness who would only be called as part of the state's rebuttal case if necessary, according to Summitt deputy county attorney Lindsay Chervenak; but Wendy Lewis, Richins' attorney, said the theory she would be called to testify about — pathway to violence — is "junk science."
Lewis asked Bryanna Fox, a criminal law professor at the University of South Florida who has worked with the FBI, to testify regarding the pathway-to-violence model, which Fox said is "pure theory" and "completely disconnected from data and science." She stated that the theory has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal and is based on intuition and conjecture.
Amman, a former FBI profiler, disagreed, stating that there are multiple studies, including recent ones. She said the pathway-to-violence model is based on behavioral and biological patterns and is useful not to predict violence but to prevent violence. However, she stated that she is not aware of any instances of its use in a courtroom.
Mrazik said prosecutors may be allowed to call Amman to testify as a blind expert — as someone not familiar with the case — but only as a rebuttal witness if Richins' attorneys make a claim that it would not be credible for someone to engage in a weeks-long campaign to kill another person. He said her comments could not be used as evidence of guilt or in response to a specific assertion.
Richins' attorneys also contested allowing the testimony of Sheri Vanino, a psychologist with a specialty in domestic violence, whose testimony defense attorney Kathryn Nester said would cause "outrageous" prejudice. She said there is no evidence of domestic violence in the 12 terabytes of data she has looked through in the case.
Mrazik largely agreed with Nester, stating that, given all he knows about the case, there is no evidence that would require her testimony. However, he said it is possible prosecutors are able to show there is evidence Eric Richins had knowledge of Kouri Richins' alleged attempt to poison him on Feb. 14, 2022, or other attempts to hurt him. If this happens, he could consider allowing Vanino's testimony.
Recent rulings
In the last week, Mrazik issued written rulings on several motions in Kouri Richins' case. He denied a motion to appoint counsel for Kouri Richins' mother, stating that it is not necessary under the current circumstances.
The judge denied a request from prosecutors asking him to reconsider severing the financial crime charges against Richins and instead allow them to be considered at the same trial and by the same jury as the murder charge. In the same ruling, he also denied prosecutors' request to still allow evidence from those charges to be brought into the trial.
Mrazik said he is not convinced that those alleged financial crimes "are an integral or natural part" of the circumstances that led to the charges against Richins for murder and attempted murder. He said evidence of her financial circumstances in the trial can be brought in without showing evidence of the alleged crimes.
"There is no reasonable dispute that defendant's financial situation — including the amount and type of her debt and her limited options to service that debt — is relevant to her motive to commit murder," the judge said in his ruling.
