News out of Utah

A Utah judge on June 6 ruled a 67-year-old convicted murderer diagnosed with dementia on death row is competent enough to be executed.

A trial court sentenced Ralph Leroy Menzies to death in 1988 for kidnapping, robbing and murdering 26-year-old Maurine Hunsaker, a married mother with three children. Since then, Menzies has been on death row.

Menzies had chosen firing squad as his method of execution, according a ruling published by KUTV. While awaiting execution, he developed vascular dementia, and his lawyers had argued he was too incompetent to be executed.

In a 22-page ruling, State Judge Matthew Bates said Menzies exhibited cognitive decline. But Bates said Menzies hasn’t shown that his “understanding of his specific crime and punishment fluctuated or declined in a way to offend the Eighth Amendment” of the Constitution, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.

Instead, Bates said in his ruling, “Menzies consistently and rationally understands the reasons for his death sentence.”

His lawyers tried to appeal his death sentence several times. Bates said Menzies’ right to appeal the ruling was exhausted in late 2023, but news outlets report Menzies' legal team plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

“Ralph Menzies is a severely brain-damaged, wheelchair-bound, 67-year-old man with dementia and significant memory problems,” Lindsey Layer, a lawyer for Menzies, said in a statement published by multiple news outlets. “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.”

USA TODAY has contacted Layer for comment.

In an emailed statement, Madison McMicken, a spokesperson for the Utah Attorney General’s office, said prosecutors were committed to seeking justice for Hunsaker.

On Feb. 23, 1986, Menzies murdered Hunsaker while she was working as a cashier at a gas station in Salt Lake County, according to court records. He abducted her and stabbed her to death, leaving her body in the woods outside of Salt Lake City.

Menzies had several past convictions for aggravated robberies before killing Hunsaker, who left behind three children, including a 6-month-old baby.

One of her children, Matt Hunsaker, was 10 when his mother was killed. He told KSLTV, a Salt Lake City TV station, that their family was one step closer to justice with the June 6 ruling.

Menzies would be the sixth person executed by firing squad in the United States since 1976, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. In 2019, the United States Supreme Court stopped the execution of an Alabama man convicted of fatally shooting a police officer because he had vascular dementia. Vernon Madison couldn't remember his crime or his punishment, justices ruled.

In 2025, South Carolina executed two people by firing squad, the first such executions since 2010, when Utah last executed a person.

The same day as Menzies' June 6 ruling, the Supreme Court said it would review using multiple intelligence tests to determine the death penalty against a person.

Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@usatoday.com or on Signal at emcuevas.01.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Utah can execute convicted murderer who has dementia, judge rules

Reporting by Eduardo Cuevas, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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