Utah judge rules a convicted killer with dementia is competent to be executed

SALT LAKE CITY — A convicted killer in Utah who developed dementia while on death row for 37 years is competent enough to be executed, a state judge ruled late Friday.

Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was sentenced to die in 1988 for killing Utah mother of three Maurine Hunsaker. Despite his recent cognitive decline, Menzies ''consistently and rationally understands" what is happening and why he is facing execution, Judge Matthew Bates wrote in a court order.

''Menzies has not shown by a preponderance of the evidence that his understanding of his specific crime and punishment has fluctuated or declined in a way that offends the Eighth Amendment,'' which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, Bates said.

Menzies had previously selected a firing squad as his method of execution. He would become only the sixth U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977.

The Utah Attorney General's Office is expected to file a death warrant soon.

Menzies' lawyers, who had argued his dementia was so severe that he could not understand why he was being put to death, said they plan to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.

''Ralph Menzies is a severely brain-damaged, wheelchair-bound, 67-year-old man with dementia and significant memory problems,'' his attorney, Lindsey Layer, said in a statement. ''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.''

The U.S. Supreme Court has spared others prisoners with dementia from execution, including an Alabama man in 2019 who had killed a police officer.

Over nearly four decades, attorneys for Menzies filed multiple appeals that delayed his death sentence, which had been scheduled at least twice before it was pushed back.

Hunsaker, a 26-year-old married mother of three, was abducted by Menzies from the convenience store where she worked. She was later found strangled and her throat cut at a picnic area in the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah. Menzies had Hunsaker's wallet and several other belongings when he was jailed on unrelated matters. He was convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes.

Matt Hunsaker, who was 10 years old when his mother was killed, said Friday that the family was overwhelmed with emotion to know that justice would finally be served.