Jurors in Kouri Richins' murder trial in Utah today heard all-day testimony from a forensic accountant who analyzed Richins' financial records and identified millions of dollars in debt related to her house-flipping business. Brooke Karrington testified she's been paid about $200,000 by the Summit County Prosecutor's Office for her work sorting through hundreds of thousands of pages of records. She testified for about four hours in direct exam about $5 million in debt, lies on Richins' real estate business website and in loan applications. Prosecutors allege Richins murdered her husband, Eric Richins, in March 2022 by posioning him with fentantly beucase she believed she could pay her debt with his life insurance proceeds. Karrington's testimony is the most legally thorny in the trial so far because Richins' lawyers argue most of it constitutes evidence of Richins' bad character that is more prejudicial than probative. Attoreny and Judge Richard Mrazik discussed how to instruct jurors regarding evidence rule 404B, which prohibits using evidence of prior crimes, wrongs, or acts to prove a person's character or propensity to commit a crime. Richins' attorney Kathy Nester cross-examined Karrington for about 50 minutes this afternoon (Tuesday, March 3, day 7), and she ended by asking if she's here to testify that Richins murdered her husband. "If, in fact, Ms. Richins was in financial distress .... You're not here to say she killed her husband, are you?" Nester asked. "That's for the jury to decide. I am not making any conclusion about that at all," Karrington answered. "Because you don't have any knowledge about that at all?" Nester asked. "Do you have any knowledge, personally, about whether or not on the night of March 3, Eric Richins voluntarily ingested fentanyl?" Nester asked. Judge Mrazik said the question already was "asked and answered." "That question that I just asked?" Nester said. "When she said she doesn't know anything about that, she meant she doesn't know anything about that," the judge said. Nester asked if Karrington saw any "statement by Kouri Richins, written down to anyone, to any of our investors, to anybody, saying, 'I know how I'm going to fix this problem. I'm going to kill my husband, and then I'll have plenty of money.' Did you ever see any of that?" Karrington said she saw "an email between her and Matt Strahm where she talks about the inconvenience of being married." "So does that answer the question I just asked you?" Nester asked. Karrington said she's "not trying to create anything, but you said, 'Is there anything that indicated anything?' And, you know, I don't talk like that." "So apart from an email that she sent saying it was inconvenient being married, have you ever seen any suggestion in anything in writing that Kouri's financial plan was to collect on life insurance and pay all this money off. Have you ever seen that?" Nester asked. "To collect the life insurance to pay everything off? No," Karrington answered. #law #crime #court #jury - @meghannmcuniff