Ralph Menzies will not die by firing squad next week, after the Utah Supreme Court announced late Friday afternoon that more evaluation is needed to determine whether the death row inmate is competent to be executed.

Menzies has vascular dementia, and his attorneys have argued that the disease has progressed to the point where he can no longer understand what is happening. Utah’s and the United States’ constitutions prohibit the government from executing someone if they don’t understand that they are being executed and the reasons why.

Third District Court Judge Matthew Bates concluded in an early July ruling that while Menzies did have dementia, he was not so mentally impaired that the death penalty could not be carried out. Soon after, he signed a death warrant for Menzies and set a Se

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