Utah News Dispatch
Judge sets date for Ralph Menzies to die by firing squad as attorneys say his dementia is worsening
Death row inmate Ralph Menzies appears in 3rd District Court on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (Pool photo by Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)
A Utah judge signed the execution warrant for death row inmate Ralph Menzies on Wednesday, setting a Sept. 5 date for the 67-year-old with dementia to die by firing squad.
The warrant marks one of the final hurdles for the state in its attempt to execute Menzies, who has spent nearly 40 years on death row for the 1986 murder of Maurine Hunsaker. It formally sets a date, and directs the Utah Department of Corrections to start planning for the execution.
In signing the warrant, 3rd District Court Judge Matthew Bates also rejected a request from Menzies’ attorneys to pause proceedings to evaluate how serious the inmate’s dementia is.
However, the question of whether Menzies is competent could still stand between him and a firing squad, and later this month Bates will decide whether the inmate should undergo another mental evaluation.
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Both state and federal law require that death row inmates have an understanding of why they’re being executed. After a monthslong competency hearing, doctors hired by Menzies’ legal team say he isn’t competent while doctors hired by the state say he is.
Bates ultimately ruled last month that Menzies did have cognitive shortcomings, but did not meet the high bar to be deemed incompetent. However, the evaluations Bates based his ruling off of took place about a year ago, and in the months since, Menzies’ attorneys say his dementia has worsened. He can no longer articulate the state’s reasoning for pursuing the death penalty, his attorneys say, and even has trouble with basic tasks like getting his food, getting dressed and cleaning his cell.
Earlier this week, his attorneys filed a petition to put proceedings on hold so Menzies could undergo another competency evaluation — and on Wednesday, after signing the execution warrant, Bates set a July 23 date to hear arguments for and against giving Menzies another competency evaluation.
So, depending on how Bates rules during that hearing, the court could pause execution proceedings. Menzies’ attorneys are also appealing Bates’ initial ruling that found him competent to the Utah Supreme Court.
But as of Wednesday, Bates could find no legal reason to stop him from signing the warrant.
“Judge Bates has been very diligent and thorough, and I believe he made the right choice today,” said Matt Hunsaker, Maurine’s son, after the ruling. He told reporters he was feeling “overwhelmed, very happy.”
Meanwhile, Menzies’ attorney Eric Zuckerman called the notion of executing his client “inhumane.”
“He’s tethered to a wheelchair and an oxygen tank. And he’s not competent. This has gotten worse over the past year and we remain hopeful that the courts or the clemency board will recognize the inhumanity of taking a man like him into the death chair, taking him out of his wheelchair, and executing him. It’s wrong and Utah can do better,” Zuckerman said outside the courtroom.
Zuckerman said Menzies wasn’t even aware of what was happening today, calling his understanding of his case immature, “something you would expect to see from a child.”
“That’s where his cognitive functioning is going, he’s becoming more and more childlike and has more and more difficulty grasping what is going on around him,” Zuckerman said.
But Hunsaker isn’t buying it.
“I think it’s a tactic,” he said after the warrant was signed. “If I woke up this morning and I was in a jail cell and didn’t know anything about my life, I would be asking people. And they have not produced any evidence whatsoever that he’s waking up confused in the morning, that he doesn’t know why he’s there. They’re just saying he doesn’t understand things.”
Daniel Boyer, who was representing the state on Wednesday, echoed Hunsaker, telling reporters he doesn’t think there’s enough in the petition to warrant another evaluation.
Menzies was convicted of murder in 1988 after he kidnapped Hunsaker, a 26-year-old gas station clerk, and took her up Big Cottonwood Canyon where she was later found tied to a tree with her throat slashed.
“His life will be over in mere seconds,” said Hunsaker on Wednesday, when asked how he’s preparing for the execution. “My mom, we don’t know how long she stood and suffered in that grove, how long she bled to death and how she felt.”
In Utah, death row inmates sentenced before May 2004 had a choice between lethal injection or firing squad. Menzies, when he was sentenced in 1988, chose the firing squad. For those sentenced after 2004, the default method of execution is lethal injection, unless the necessary drugs are not available.
