Summit County has budgeted almost $1.2 million this year for public defenders, including those for a Kamas-area mom and former real estate agent on trial for murder.
Kouri Richins has pleaded not guilty, and her previous attorneys withdrew from the case in 2024. Deputy County Manager Janna Young said back in November that her court-appointed public defenders were costing the county about $50,000 per month.
“We're going to be well into the millions just on that one side alone,” County Manager Shayne Scott said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” March 10.
Scott said the costs for the highly publicized trial have snowballed because the trial is also keeping prosecutors from working on other cases.
“We've had to bring in other attorneys just to prosecute the day-to-day cases,” Scott said. “So the impacts of this are going to be far reaching. And we hope that it will be a spike; it'll be something that will go down eventually.”
One expert witness, a forensic accountant, has already testified to being paid $200,000 total for her services. The state has also hired a digital forensics expert and handwriting expert to build a case against Richins.
Costs on the prosecution side totaled $300,000 in 2025, Deputy Civil Attorney Dave Thomas said in November.
Scott now says that, were it not for a cash infusion from a new voter-approved sales tax, Summit County would likely have needed to raise property taxes.
“We would have just had to go through Truth-in-Taxation,” he said. “Just flat out what we would have had to do.”
Summit County is closely watching another high-profile murder trial in Utah County, where Tyler Robinson is accused of killing conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
County leaders there have asked the Utah Legislature to pitch in $2 million for the Robinson case.
Otherwise, the counties bear the full cost of their trials.
Kouri Richins’ attorneys are from the firms Nester Lewis and Langford Ramos. Scott said they weren’t the cheapest options. But after consulting other attorneys, he decided he’d rather pay more up front to avoid potential legal issues including another trial.
“We want Ms. Richins to have a fair trial. We don't want to do this again, first and foremost,” Scott said.
He added that the prosecutors, who are already county-paid employees, aren’t involved in evaluating whether bills from the public defenders are reasonable. That’s to avoid a conflict of interest.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW.
