In a petition asking Utah’s parole board to spare death row inmate Ralph Menzies’ life, his attorneys detail what they say will happen if Utah executes the 67-year-old man as scheduled on Sept. 5:
Officers will remove the oxygen tubes from his nose that Menzies relies on to breathe. Multiple people will have to help him into the execution chamber, since he requires the use of a wheelchair or walker.
Then, five people will train high-velocity rifles on what attorneys described as “the body of a frail, elderly man who is already fading” from the effects of dementia. And then they’ll fire.
“This will not be justice,” Menzies’ attorneys wrote. “His execution will serve no purpose than to turn the inevitability of death into a needless display of violence.”
Menzies has been on Utah’s death row for nearly 40 years after he kidnapped and killed a young mother, Maurine Hunsaker, in 1986. Earlier this month, a judge signed a death warrant for Menzies, finding that there was no legal reason to hold off on the execution after Menzies had exhausted all of his appeals.
Menzies will be in court next week, though, as his attorneys continue to argue that the man’s dementia has gotten worse and to ask that the judge halt the execution so Menzies can be evaluated to determine whether he is competent. (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.)
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, his attorneys asked Utah’s parole board in a clemency petition to spare Menzies’ life. Unlike in some other states, Utah’s governor cannot commute a death sentence — only the parole board has that power. This is one of the last steps that Menzies can take to try to stop his execution.
Gov. Spencer Cox, during his monthly news conference Thursday, said he was relieved that he doesn’t decide whether a death row inmate is granted clemency. He told reporters, “Selfishly, it’s a relief to not have that power. It’s nice not to have people, you know, coming and begging for me to be able to make those decisions.”
Jennifer Yim, the board administrator for the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, confirmed Wednesday that the board received Menzies’ petition, and said the state now has seven days to respond. The board will then review the documents and make a decision on whether to grant a commutation hearing for Menzies.
The Utah attorney general’s office declined to comment on Menzies’ petition on Wednesday. Lawyers with the office have previously argued that, despite his dementia, Menzies still has an understanding of the death penalty and was not incompetent to be executed.
Commutation hearings are rare in Utah — since 2010, there’s only been two. Both men, Ronnie Lee Gardner and Taberon Honie, had their petitions denied and were executed.
Menzies’ petition largely asks the parole board to spare his life because of his worsening dementia, with his attorneys arguing that he is too frail to be a danger to anyone within the prison and asks that he be allowed to spend the rest of his life locked up instead.
His attorneys noted that they have advised Menzies not to speak at his commutation hearing, if the board grants one, because he no longer remembers the crime or his trial and he “cannot meaningfully prepare, recall his remarks, or remain focused on the subject at hand.”
Here are other key arguments besides Menzies’ health that his attorneys have made in an effort to stop his execution.
Problems at trial
In 1986, Menzies kidnapped Hunsaker, a 26-year-old mother, from a Kearns gas station, slit her throat and left her body tied to a tree near a picnic area in Big Cottonwood Canyon. A jury convicted him at a trial two years later.
Maurine Hunsaker
Menzies’ attorneys detailed a number of incidents during his trial which they say prejudiced the jury. One juror fainted during testimony, they say, and after which Menzies was abruptly shackled and removed from the courtroom in front of the jury. Later, the petition says, a court reporter began crying during the medical examiner’s testimony.
Another juror received an anonymous phone call from someone who alleged Menzies had committed another murder, according to the petition, and another juror had “multiple breakdowns” during the trial.
There’s no reliable trial transcript, according to the petition, and appellate attorneys have noted portions missing, transcripts that did not make sense and parts of the transcripts that were lifted verbatim from police reports.
Menzies’ attorneys further argue that his trial attorneys were unprepared for the penalty phase of the trial and failed to review necessary records.
Sentencing judge’s opinion changed
Menzies’ attorneys also asked the parole board to consider an affidavit that Judge Raymond Uno, who sentenced Menzies’ to death, wrote in 2010.
In that affidavit, Uno said he misapplied the law when he handed down the death sentence. The remedy for the error, he suggested, should be that Menzies have his sentence reduced to life in prison.
He also noted that Menzies’ had presented “unrebutted evidence of mental illness” which should have also spared Menzies’ life.
Uno died last year.
Conviction Integrity Unit’s opinion
Salt Lake County District Sim Gill created a Conviction Integrity Unit in 2018, a panel of heavy-hitters in Utah’s legal world who review cases where people say they are innocent despite being found guilty in court.
Menzies’ attorneys say in his petition that this unit reviewed his case and made the recommendation to Gill that Menzies be resentenced to life-without-parole because the trial judge who sentenced Menzies relied on testimony from a jailhouse informant who later recanted.
The attorneys noted that one of the panel members who made the recommendation was Christine Durham, the retired Utah Supreme Court justice who had previously upheld Menzies’ conviction and sentence while serving on the state’s high court.
According to the petition, Gill declined to follow the panel’s recommendation. At the time that Menzies’ was sentenced, life-without-parole was not a sentencing option; the judge only had the choice to order Menzies’ execution or give him a 25-year-to-life indeterminate sentence.
The petition said Gill declined to re-sentence Menzies because he did not believe he could apply sentencing law changes retroactively and ask a judge to give Menzies a sentence that was not legally available at the time he committed the crime.
Tribune reporter Addy Baird contributed to this report.