Utah killer with dementia is competent to face death penalty, judge rules

A convicted killer in Utah who developed dementia during his time on death row is competent enough to be executed, a state judge ruled on Friday.

Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was found guilty and sentenced to death in March 1988 for the 1986 killing of Maurine Hunsaker, a 26-year-old mother of three.

Judge Matthew Bates said Menzies “consistently and rationally understands” what is happening and why he is facing execution, despite his recent cognitive decline.

“Menzies has not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that his understanding of his specific crime and punishment has fluctuated or declined in a way that offends the Eighth Amendment,” which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, Bates said in his court order.

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Menzies selected the firing squad as his method of execution and will become only the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977 — three in Utah, with the last one in the state carried out in 2010, and two in South Carolina this year.

The Utah Attorney General’s Office is expected to file a death warrant soon.

Menzies’ lawyers had argued their client’s dementia was so severe that he could not understand why he was being put to death, adding that they plan to appeal Friday’s ruling to the state Supreme Court.

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“Ralph Menzies is a severely brain-damaged, wheelchair-bound, 67-year-old man with dementia and significant memory problems,” his attorney, Lindsey Layer, said in a statement. “It is deeply troubling that Utah plans to remove Mr. Menzies from his wheelchair and oxygen tank to strap him into an execution chair and shoot him to death.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously spared death row inmates with dementia from execution, including an Alabama man in 2019 who was convicted of killing a police officer.

Since his sentencing 37 years ago, Menzies’ attorneys have filed multiple appeals that delayed his death sentence, which had been scheduled at least twice before it was postponed.

Menzies had abducted Hunsaker in February 1986 from the convenience store where she worked, just three days after he was released on bail over an unrelated crime. Hunsaker was later found strangled with her throat cut at a picnic area in the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah.

When he was later jailed on unrelated matters, Menzies had Hunsaker’s wallet and several other items that belonged to her. He was convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes.

Matt Hunsaker, who was 10 years old when his mother was killed, said Friday that his family is overwhelmed with emotion to know that justice will finally be served.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.