Utah’s parole board announced Tuesday afternoon that it will hold a commutation hearing for Ralph Menzies, a 67-year-old death row inmate who has asked the board to stop his September execution and allow him to live the rest of his life in prison.
The date of the hearing has not been set as of Tuesday afternoon. This is one of the last steps that Menzies can take to try to stop his execution.
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 him, finding that there was no legal reason to hold off on the execution after Menzies had exhausted all of his appeals.
That judge, however, is currently weighing whether to potentially delay the execution so an expert can evaluate whether Menzies’ dementia has worsened to the point where he is no longer competent and can not be executed. 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.
It wasn’t a guarantee that Menzies would get a commutation hearing with the Utah parole board, and the Utah attorney general’s office fought against it.
In a lengthy filing, attorneys for the state argued that Menzies was competent and does understand what’s happening around him. They also argued that a commutation hearing wasn’t needed because it would simply be relitigating Menzies’ conviction and sentence.
Unlike in other recent commutation hearings, it’s not likely that the parole board will hear directly from the death row inmate. His attorneys wrote in his commutation petition that they’ve advised him not to speak during the hearing, because his dementia has caused him to forget the crime and his trial, and he cannot meaningfully prepare his own remarks.
Menzies’ petition largely asked the parole board to spare his life because of his progressing dementia, with his attorneys arguing that he is too frail to be a danger to anyone within the prison.
His attorneys noted that if the state goes through with the Sept. 5 execution, it will require officers removing the oxygen tubes from Menzies’ nose that he relies on to breathe, and helping him into the execution chamber, since he requires the use of a wheelchair. That, they argued, would be a “needless display of violence.”
But Assistant Utah Solicitor General Thomas Brunker said the true “needless display of violence” was what brought Menzies to death row in the first place: That he kidnapped Hunsaker while she was working as a gas station clerk, handcuffed her to a tree, strangled her and cut her throat so deeply it nearly decapitated her.
“All this,” he wrote, “to get $115 from the gas station till.”
Maurine Hunsaker
Unlike in some other states, Utah’s governor cannot commute a death sentence — only the parole board has that power.
Five board members are needed to weigh whether to spare Menzies from execution. Board members Blake Hills, Greg Johnson and Melissa Stirba will deliberate, but parole board officials say two other temporary members will step in after Scott Stephenson left the board and Dan Bokovoy recused himself because he previously worked as the attorney for the corrections department.
Bob Yates and Bradley Rich were initially announced as temporary members, but last week officials said Rich won’t hear the case after it was discovered that he had been listed as Menzies’ legal counsel in 1979 and 1980. Rich told the parole board that he doesn’t recall working on the case or speaking with Menzies, but he’s been replaced by attorney Nathan Evershed.