02 September 2025 :
August 29, 2025 - Utah. Death row inmate Ralph Menzies wins appeal, Sept. 5 execution called off
With less than a week before his scheduled firing squad execution, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of death row inmate Ralph Menzies on Friday, effectively repealing his execution warrant.
Now, the 67-year-old with dementia will receive another evaluation to determine whether he is competent to be executed. That means his Sept. 5 execution will be delayed, and there’s a possibility that it will never happen.
It’s a major twist after more than a year of debate surrounding Menzies’ mental decline. Menzies was sentenced to death in 1988 for the murder of Maurine Hunsaker, but his attorneys have argued that his dementia has progressed, making him ineligible to be executed.
Death row inmates in the U.S. must have a “rational understanding” of why they’re being executed, per both state and federal law — that means they must understand the government’s reasoning for pursuing the death penalty, and know that their crime is particularly heinous.
Menzies’ attorneys say he doesn’t meet that bar. But earlier this year, Utah 3rd District Judge Matthew Bates ruled that Menzies, despite having dementia, was competent enough to be executed. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole also denied Menzies commutation.
The Utah Supreme Court marked Menzies’ final appeal. And in a 23-page ruling issued Friday afternoon, the justices wrote Menzies’ “vascular dementia and its progressive effects call into question whether he remains competent to be executed.”
“We acknowledge that this uncertainty has caused the family of Maurine Hunsaker immense suffering, and it is not our desire to prolong that suffering. But we are bound by the rule of law,” the opinion reads.
The question before the state’s high court was whether Menzies should get another competency evaluation. Several doctors and medical experts evaluated Menzies last year, and over several days presented their findings to Bates, who ruled in June that the execution should move forward.
In July, Menzies’ attorneys filed a petition for another competency review, arguing that his dementia had worsened since the initial evaluations, which were done last year. Corrections staff noticed his mental decline, and medical experts who reviewed Menzies reported “a new inability in his understanding of his death sentence,” according to court documents.
Bates denied that request on Aug. 14 — last week, Menzies’ attorneys made their appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, a last-ditch effort to avoid the firing squad.
Utah law sets a high bar to allow for a second competency evaluation. There must be valid allegations of a “substantial change” in the inmate’s circumstances since the prior evaluation; and those allegations must be “sufficient to raise a significant question” about the inmate’s competency.
Attorneys for the state say he didn’t show enough evidence to warrant another hearing, arguing that certain exhibits were incomplete. And Bates ultimately agreed.
However, the ruling on Friday found that Bates, when he denied the petition for another hearing, “minimized” expert reports that suggested Menzies’ condition had worsened. The ruling sends the case back to a lower court.
“We reverse the district court’s order denying Menzies’s petition for reevaluation, vacate the warrant of execution and remand to the district court for further proceedings,” the ruling reads.
It’s unclear how long this could delay Menzies’ execution, and it’s possible that the lower court will find that the inmate now meets the threshold to be considered incompetent, meaning he would spend the rest of his life in prison. In their ruling, the supreme court acknowledged their decision “may cause additional delay.”
https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/08/29/menzies-execution-called-off-utah-supreme-court/
