Utah judge schedules execution by firing squad for a man with dementia
SALT Lake City (AP) – A Utah judge on Wednesday determined a date of execution for a man with dementia For 37 years during deathEven if his lawyers apply for appeal and claim that his situation is worsening.
67 -year -old Ralph Leroy Menzies will be executed in 1986 that three Maurine Hunker kidnapped Utah’s mother in 1986 and will be executed on 5 September. When an option was given decades ago, Menzies chose a fire team as an execution method. Since 1977, only the team, who had been shooting, would be the sixth US prisoner who was executed.
Judge Matthew Bates signed his death order a month after he ruled Menzies “consistently and rationally”. He understands why he is facing execution Despite the last cognitive decline. Menzies lawyers filed a petition to the court for a re -evaluation, but Bates said on Wednesday that there was no basis for preventing a date of appeal.
However, Bates planned a July 23 hearing to evaluate the new petition of competence. Menzies ‘lawyers’ dementia is so severe, using a wheelchair, depends on oxygen and can not understand the legal case, he says.
Menzies lawyer Lindsey layer said, uz We hope that the courts or Clemency board will recognize that executing a man who has suffered a steep cognitive decline and significant memory loss is deeply inhuman, ”he said. “To get the life of someone who has no threat to anyone and has a deadly illness that overcomes the mind and identity by dementia, serves neither justice nor human morality.”
Chief Public Prosecutor Daniel Boyer said that the Utah Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office was “full confidence ında in the judge’s decision.
From time to time, the US Supreme Court survived the execution of the demanti, including an al -aabama man who killed a police officer in 2019. If a defendant could not understand why he was killed, the Supreme Court said that the execution was not suffering from society at that time.
Hunsaker’s son Matt, who was 10 years old when his mother was killed, is hard to swallow so long to get justice ”.
The judge said in a statement on Wednesday, “Today you give the order, you are starting a process for our family,” he said. “He puts everyone in the clock. Now we’ve introduced another generation from my mother, and we still don’t have justice.”
26 -year -old Hunsaker was kidnapped by Menzies from a grocery store where Kearns worked in the suburb of Salt Lake City. He was then drowned and cut about 16 miles (25 kilometers) in a picnic area in the Big Cottonwood Canyon of his throat. Menzies had Hunsaker’s wallet and several other items when he was imprisoned on unrelated issues. In 1988, he was convicted of first -degree murder and other crimes.
For about forty years, Menzies lawyers made more than one objection that delayed the death penalty and planned at least twice before being pushed back. Another utah prisoners sentenced before May 2004 was made between the fire team and the deadly injection. For prisoners sentenced in the state after this date, fatal injection is the default method unless drugs cannot be used.
Utah lastly fired the team in 2010 and executed the prisoners. South Carolina He used the method on two men this year. Only three states – Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma – Fire team allows executions.
Menzies is among the 10 people who are planned to result in death in seven states in the rest of 2025. He died by twenty -five men in the USA Court order So far this year.
