Competency Evaluation Ordered for Condemned Utah Prisoner
On February 13, 2024, the Third Judicial Circuit Court in and for Salt Lake County, Utah, ordered an examination to determine if death row prisoner Ralph Leroy Menzies, 65, is competent to be executed. Menzies’ attorneys argued that he suffers from dementia.
After Maurine Hunsaker’s body was found tied to a tree in Big Cottonwood Canyon in 1986, Menzies was convicted two years later of kidnapping her from a convenience store and murdering her. Fast-forward 36 years, and as his execution neared, Menzies’ attorneys filed a petition that included a written evaluation from Dr. Lynette M. Abrams-Silva, who opined “that Menzies suffers from vascular dementia and lacks the ability to form a rational understanding of the reasons why the State seeks to execute him,” as the Court recalled. Though prosecutors disagreed that Menzies is incompetent to be executed, they did not object to “further inquiry into Menzies’ mental health” in order to develop “a complete and accurate record, analysis, and determination” of his competency for execution.
Accordingly, the Court stayed proceedings leading to the execution, cancelled a hearing on the State’s application for an execution warrant that was scheduled for February 23, 2024, and also appointed two independent examiners to evaluate Menzies’ competency. The examiners were ordered to determine the prisoner’s understanding of his impending execution, the nature of any mental disorder he may suffer and its relevancy to the competency question, as well as whether psychotropic medication would restore competency, along with any other factors that the examiners determined to be relevant. Their reports were due no later than 90 days from the Court’s order, after which a hearing was tentatively scheduled for September 2024. See: State v. Menzies, Utah 3rd Jud. Dist. (W. Jordan Dep’t), Case No. 031102598.
If he is executed, Menzies will die by firing squad, also the method used in the state’s 2010 execution of double murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49; the only Utah execution since occurred on August 8, 2024, when Taberone Dave Honie, 48, was killed by lethal injection for the 1998 rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn. No execution date has been set for any of the other five men on the state’s death row.
Additional source: KSL