U.S. News

Prosecutors Fight Back Against Kouri Richins’ Bid to Postpone Sentencing

By Erica Coleman · April 27, 2026

The sentencing date is May 13 — which would have been Eric Richins’ 44th birthday. And that, prosecutors argue, is exactly where it should stay.

Kouri Richins, the Utah mother convicted last month of poisoning her husband to death with a lethal dose of fentanyl and then writing a children’s grief book while under suspicion of his murder, is asking a judge to move her sentencing from May 13 to the week of June 15 — a five-week delay her defense team says they need to prepare adequate mitigation evidence.

Summit County Chief Prosecutor Brad Bloodworth filed a motion opposing the delay, and the language he used was pointed.

“For three years, Eric Richins’ family has painfully and patiently stood by as the defendant has manufactured one reason after another to delay this proceeding,” Bloodworth wrote. “There is no good reason for them to suffer further delay. The time has come to sentence Kouri Richins.”

Richins, 35, was found guilty on March 16 of five felony charges: aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder, two counts of insurance fraud, and forgery. A jury concluded she poisoned her husband’s cocktail with fentanyl in March 2022 because she wanted out of the marriage and intended to collect on his life insurance. She faces either 25 years to life in prison or life without the possibility of parole — two options that, prosecutors argue, give the defense 53 days from verdict to sentencing, which is more than adequate time to prepare.

The defense offered four reasons for the delay request. Attorney Wendy Lewis said the seriousness of the sentencing options requires additional time to prepare mitigation witnesses. Lead attorney Kathy Nester recently had a death in the family and will be out of the country for the first two weeks of June. A third attorney on the team, Alexander Ramos, has a separate trial scheduled for the week of May 11.

Bloodworth acknowledged Nester’s family loss but was direct in his opposition: the defense had agreed to May 13 the day the verdict was read, he said, and Richins herself reportedly told one of her attorneys the next day to “reschedule it for the end of May” — a detail prosecutors cited as evidence the delay request is driven by preference rather than necessity.

Judge Richard Mrazik had not ruled on the motion as of Friday. His decision will determine whether Eric Richins’ family sits in a Park City, Utah courtroom on the day that would have been his birthday and hears the sentence that closes the case — or waits another five weeks.

The Richins case drew national attention not only for the fentanyl poisoning itself, but for the extraordinary detail that followed: within months of her husband’s death, Kouri Richins self-published a children’s book about coping with grief, reportedly telling her children their father had died of a heart attack. She was arrested the following year.