Thursday, July 10, 2025 - A Utah judge on Wednesday, July 9, set an execution date for a man with dementia who has been on de@th row for 37 years.
Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, is set to be executed on Sept. 5
for abducting and k!lling Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. When
given a choice decades ago,
Menzies selected a firing squad as his method of
execution. He would become only the sixth US prisoner executed by firing squad
since 1977.
Judge Matthew Bates signed the de@th warrant a month after
he ruled Menzies “consistently and rationally” understands why he is facing
execution despite recent cognitive decline.
Attorneys for Menzies have petitioned the court for a
reassessment, but Bates said Wednesday that the pending appeal was not a basis
to stop him from setting a date.
Bates did, however, schedule a July 23 hearing to evaluate
the new competency petition. Menzies’ attorneys say his dementia has gotten so
severe that he uses a wheelchair, is dependent on oxygen, and cannot understand
his legal case.
“We remain hopeful that the courts or the clemency board
will recognize the profound inhumanity of executing a man who is experiencing
steep cognitive decline and significant memory loss,” said Lindsey Layer, an
attorney for Menzies. “Taking the life of someone with a terminal illness who
is no longer a threat to anyone and whose mind and identity have been overtaken
by dementia serves neither justice nor human decency.”
The Utah Attorney General’s Office has “full confidence” in
the judge’s decision, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Boyer said.
The US Supreme Court has at times spared prisoners
with dementia from execution, including an Alabama man in 2019 who had k!lled a
police officer.
If a defendant cannot understand why they are being put to
de@th, the high court said, then an execution is not carrying out the
retribution that society is seeking.
For Hunsaker’s son Matt, who was 10 years old when his
mother was killed, it has been “hard to swallow that it’s taken this long” to
get justice.
“You issue the warrant today, you start a process for our family,” he told the judge Wednesday. “It puts everybody on the clock. We’ve now introduced another generation of my mom, and we still don’t have justice served.”
Hunsaker, 26, was abducted by Menzies from a convenience store where she worked in the Salt Lake City suburb of Kearns. She was later found strangled and her throat cut about 16 miles (25 kilometers) away at a picnic area in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Menzies had Hunsaker’s wallet and several other belongings when he was jailed on unrelated matters. He was convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes in 1988.
Over nearly four decades, attorneys for Menzies filed
multiple appeals that delayed his de@th sentence, which had been scheduled at
least twice before it was pushed back.
Utah last executed prisoners by firing squad in 2010,
and South Carolina used the method on two men this year. Only three other
states; Idaho, Mississippi, and Oklahoma allow firing squad executions.
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