SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah choose on Wednesday set an execution date for a person with dementia who has been on loss of life row for 37 years, whilst his legal professionals file appeals and argue his situation is worsening.
Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, is ready to be executed Sept. 5 for abducting and killing Utah mom of three Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. When given a selection many years in the past, Menzies chosen a firing squad as his methodology of execution. He would develop into solely the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977.
Choose Matthew Bates signed the loss of life warrant a month after he dominated Menzies “persistently and rationally” understands why he’s going through execution regardless of latest cognitive decline. Attorneys for Menzies have petitioned the courtroom for a reassessment, however Bates mentioned Wednesday that the pending enchantment was not a foundation to cease him from setting a date.
Bates did, nonetheless, schedule a July 23 listening to to guage the brand new competency petition. Menzies’ attorneys say his dementia has gotten so extreme that he makes use of a wheelchair, relies on oxygen and can’t perceive his authorized case.
“We stay hopeful that the courts or the clemency board will acknowledge the profound inhumanity of executing a person who’s experiencing steep cognitive decline and important reminiscence loss,” mentioned Lindsey Layer, an lawyer for Menzies. “Taking the life of somebody with a terminal sickness who’s now not a menace to anybody and whose thoughts and id have been overtaken by dementia serves neither justice nor human decency.”
The Utah Lawyer Normal’s Workplace has “full confidence” within the choose’s choice, Assistant Lawyer Normal Daniel Boyer mentioned.
The U.S. Supreme Court docket has at instances spared prisoners with dementia from execution, together with an Alabama man in 2019 who had killed a police officer. If a defendant can not perceive why they’re being put to loss of life, the excessive courtroom mentioned, then an execution isn’t finishing up the retribution that society is in search of.
For Hunsaker’s son Matt, who was 10 years outdated when his mom was killed, it has been “laborious to swallow that it’s taken this lengthy” to get justice.
“You subject the warrant right now, you begin a course of for our household,” he informed the choose Wednesday. “It places all people on the clock. We’ve now launched one other era of my mother, and we nonetheless don’t have justice served.”
Hunsaker, 26, was kidnapped by Menzies from a comfort retailer the place she labored within the Salt Lake Metropolis suburb of Kearns. She was later discovered strangled and her throat minimize about 16 miles (25 kilometers) away at a picnic space in Large Cottonwood Canyon. Menzies had Hunsaker’s pockets and several other different belongings when he was jailed on unrelated issues. He was convicted of first-degree homicide and different crimes in 1988.
Over practically 4 many years, attorneys for Menzies filed a number of appeals that delayed his loss of life sentence, which had been scheduled at the least twice earlier than it was pushed again. He and different Utah loss of life row inmates sentenced earlier than Might 2004 got a selection between firing squad and deadly injection. For inmates sentenced within the state after that date, deadly injection is the default methodology except the medicine are unavailable.
Utah final executed prisoners by firing squad in 2010, and South Carolina used the strategy on two males this yr. Solely three different states — Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma — permit firing squad executions.
Menzies is amongst 10 individuals scheduled to be put to loss of life in seven states throughout the the rest of 2025. Twenty-five males within the U.S. have died by court-ordered execution to date this yr.
