SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — A Utah woman who is charged with murdering her husband in 2022 is claiming that she can not be given a fair trial, claiming "prosecutorial misconduct."
Defense attorneys are asking the court to dismiss all charges against Kouri Darden Richins, who is facing trial for allegedly killing her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl.
In the motion filed Wednesday, Richins' legal team mainly focused on the "Walk the Dog" letter — a six-page handwritten letter that prosecutors labeled in publicly available court documents as "witness tampering." The Summit County Attorney's Office claimed that the letter (which, for unknown reasons, had "Walk the Dog" written in large font on the top of the first page), included instructions from Richins to her mother, asking her to have Richins' brother give false testimony.
In the letter, Richins says to instruct her brother to repeat, "Eric told [redacted name] that he got Pain Pills and fentanyl from Mexico from workers on the ranch." Richins has since claimed that this letter was not written to her mother, but rather part of a fictional book she is writing.
Richins' latest motion claims that it was improper for the prosecution to call the letter witness tampering when they have not charged her with such an offense. It claims this would sway potential jurors, "such that a fair trial in this case is no longer possible."
The motion also claims that the letter was likely obtained in an illegal search. The police report used...
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