Is Ralph Menzies competent enough to face a firing squad? A Utah court will soon decide

Ralph Leroy Menzies appears for a competency hearing in 3rd District Court in West Jordan on Monday, Nov 18, 2024. Photo: Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune

By Kyle Dunphy, Utah News Dispatch

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Monday marked the start of a five-day competency hearing for Utah death row inmate Ralph Menzies, where his attorneys will try to argue that the 65-year-old convicted murderer with dementia is so mentally impaired that he cannot face execution.

Menzies’ brain, his attorneys say, is literally wasting away. “It’s indisputable that Mr. Menzies has brain damage,” his attorney Eric Zuckerman told the judge during Monday’s hearing.

Menzies was convicted in 1988 for kidnapping and murdering Maurine Hunsaker, who was working as a cashier at a Kearns gas station. Menzies took Hunsaker up Big Cottonwood Canyon, keeping her overnight in a picnic area. Two days later, her body was found tied to a tree with her throat slashed.

Maurine’s son, Matt Hunsaker, doesn’t believe his mother’s killer is incompetent. “He knows what he did,” he told reporters on Monday.

Over the last decade, Menzies’ cognitive decline, brought on by vascular dementia, has been noticeable, according to testimony on Monday — so much that his attorneys say he doesn’t know why he’s facing execution, and cannot make the connection between his crime and the punishment.

Those are symptoms of vascular dementia, experts testified on Monday. It’s a condition where the brain’s blood flow is disrupted, leading to memory loss and declining cognitive function. An MRI exam showed Menzies’ brain tissue is deteriorating, and his balance is fraught, causing him to fall several times each month.

Over the next five days, 3rd District Court Judge Matthew Bates will hear arguments for and against declaring Menzies incompetent.

If Menzies’ attorneys prove his incompetence, he will still spend the rest of his life in prison, but it will likely mark the end of the state’s pursuit of the death penalty. Matt Hunsaker told reporters after the hearing that if Menzies is found incompetent, his family will no longer advocate for his execution. He believes the state will follow suit.

That doesn’t mean Hunsaker thinks Menzies should be spared.

“He deserves to be executed,” Hunsaker said. “He does not deserve to be here.”

If he’s found competent, Menzies could face execution by firing squad sometime in the spring. There could be more appeals, including a possible clemency hearing in front of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. But determining his competency is the last major hurdle the state must clear before his death sentence is carried out.

In Utah, death row inmates sentenced before May 2004 had a choice between lethal injection and firing squad. For those sentenced after 2004, the default method of execution is lethal injection, unless the necessary drugs are not available.

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