By Nicki Brown, CNN
(CNN) — During Kouri Richins’ weekslong murder trial, her attorneys repeatedly drove home the crux of their defense – that prosecutors could not prove how the drugs that killed her husband entered his body.
Not one of more than 40 witnesses called by the prosecution testified about how Kouri Richins administered roughly five times a lethal dose of fentanyl to Eric Richins in March 2022. In the prosecution’s closing argument, Brad Bloodworth argued she slipped the drugs into her husband’s drinks the night he died.
“They cannot tell you how Eric ingested that fentanyl,” defense attorney Wendy Lewis told jurors in her closing argument. “They haven’t done their job, and now they want you to make inferences based on paper-thin evidence.”
To prove their case, prosecutors relied largely on circumstantial evidence to tie her to Eric Richins’ death. After roughly three hours of deliberations, a Utah jury on Monday convicted Kouri Richins of aggravated murder and all other charges.
Cases based on direct evidence are not necessarily stronger than those that rely on circumstantial evidence, legal experts said. Unlike direct evidence, such as eyewitnesses or recordings of a crime, circumstantial cases require jurors to determine a defendant’s guilt by weaving together indirect evidence.
In Kouri Richins’ case, prosecutors focused on potential motives for Kouri Richins to kill her husband and actions they said show her guilty conscience after his death – both elements that can illustrate a defendant’s state of mind. They also used digital records to corroborate key witness testimony, which strengthened their circumstantial case.
“All of these things together start to add up, and the prosecution builds this huge mountain,” Massachusetts criminal defense attorney Elyse Hershon said. “The defense is trying to take pieces out, but it did not collapse.”
Motives give jurors ‘a reason to convict’
Prosecutors focused much of their case on the reasons Kouri Richins may have wanted her husband dead: she was unhappy in her marriage, having an affair with another man and believed she stood to receive millions of dollars after his death.
“A motive gives the ‘why’ – why an alleged crime was committed by the defendant sitting in the courtroom,” said CNN Trial Correspondent Jean Casarez, herself an attorney who closely covered the trial. “Juries want to know why. That gives them a reason to convict.”
Despite the salacious details about Kouri Richins’ extramarital affair, prosecutors largely concentrated on her desperate financial situation. A forensic accountant testified for a full day about Kouri Richins’ struggling real estate business and perpetual debt cycle.
“As of the date that Eric Richins died, Kouri Richins was in financial distress and her financial enterprise was collapsing, had been collapsing – and but for a significant infusion of cash and capital, would have continued to collapse,” said Brooke Karrington, who analyzed financial records in the case.
Eric Richins’ life was insured for more than $2.2 million through several policies, including one his wife was convicted of applying for fraudulently.
Ten days after that policy took effect, Kouri Richins attempted to kill her husband on Valentine’s Day, her jury found. A month later, he was dead.
“Kouri Richins wanted to murder Eric Richins, thus took out an insurance policy on his life to get money for murdering Eric Richins,” Bloodworth told the jury in his closing a