Utah judge schedules execution by firing squad for a man with dementia

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah justice connected Wednesday acceptable an execution day for a antheral with dementia who has been connected decease enactment for 37 years, adjacent arsenic his lawyers record appeals and reason his information is worsening.

Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, is acceptable to beryllium executed Sept. 5 for abducting and sidesplitting Utah parent of 3 Maurine Hunsaker successful 1986. When fixed a prime decades ago, Menzies selected a firing squad arsenic his method of execution. He would go lone the sixth U.S. captive executed by firing squad since 1977.

Judge Matthew Bates signed the decease warrant a period aft helium ruled Menzies “consistently and rationally” understands wherefore helium is facing execution contempt caller cognitive decline. Attorneys for Menzies person petitioned the tribunal for a reassessment, but Bates said Wednesday that the pending entreaty was not a ground to halt him from mounting a date.

Bates did, however, docket a July 23 proceeding to measure the caller competency petition. Menzies' attorneys accidental his dementia has gotten truthful terrible that helium uses a wheelchair, is babelike connected oxygen and cannot recognize his ineligible case.

“We stay hopeful that the courts oregon the clemency committee volition admit the profound inhumanity of executing a antheral who is experiencing steep cognitive diminution and important representation loss,” said Lindsey Layer, an lawyer for Menzies. “Taking the beingness of idiosyncratic with a terminal unwellness who is nary longer a menace to anyone and whose caput and individuality person been overtaken by dementia serves neither justness nor quality decency.”

The Utah Attorney General’s Office has “full confidence” successful the judge's decision, Assistant Attorney General Daniel Boyer said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has astatine times spared prisoners with dementia from execution, including an Alabama antheral successful 2019 who had killed a constabulary officer. If a suspect cannot recognize wherefore they are being enactment to death, the precocious tribunal said, past an execution is not carrying retired the retribution that nine is seeking.

For Hunsaker's lad Matt, who was 10 years aged erstwhile his parent was killed, it has been “hard to swallow that it’s taken this long” to get justice.

“You contented the warrant today, you commencement a process for our family,” helium told the justice Wednesday. “It puts everybody connected the clock. We’ve present introduced different procreation of my mom, and we inactive don’t person justness served.”

Hunsaker, 26, was abducted by Menzies from a convenience store wherever she worked successful the Salt Lake City suburb of Kearns. She was aboriginal recovered strangled and her pharynx chopped astir 16 miles (25 kilometers) distant astatine a picnic country successful Big Cottonwood Canyon. Menzies had Hunsaker’s wallet and respective different belongings erstwhile helium was jailed connected unrelated matters. He was convicted of first-degree execution and different crimes successful 1988.

Over astir 4 decades, attorneys for Menzies filed aggregate appeals that delayed his decease sentence, which had been scheduled astatine slightest doubly earlier it was pushed back. He and different Utah decease enactment inmates sentenced earlier May 2004 were fixed a prime betwixt firing squad and lethal injection. For inmates sentenced successful the authorities aft that date, lethal injection is the default method unless the drugs are unavailable.

Utah past executed prisoners by firing squad successful 2010, and South Carolina utilized the method connected 2 men this year. Only 3 different states — Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma — let firing squad executions.

Menzies is among 10 radical scheduled to beryllium enactment to decease successful 7 states during the remainder of 2025. Twenty-five men successful the U.S. person died by court-ordered execution truthful acold this year.