The office of the Utah Attorney General at the Capitol in Salt Lake City is pictured on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Ralph Menzies could be Utah’s next death row inmate to be executed. But the question of whether the 65-year-old man with dementia is competent currently stands between him and the firing squad.
And Menzies’ attorneys are worried that competency review could be influenced by the Utah Attorney General’s Office — on Wednesday, 3rd District Court Judge Matthew Bates heard arguments for and against disqualifying the Attorney General’s Office from prosecuting the case over a conflict of interest.
Bates will decide in the coming weeks whether new prosecutors should be assigned to the case. But he did order the Attorney General’s Office to hand over emails which they had previously refused to provide, arguing they should be protected under attorney-client privilege.
The competency review is intended to determine whether Menzies, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering Maurine Hunsaker in 1988, is aware of and knows the reason for his upcoming execution.
His attorneys say that review could be tainted by the Utah Attorney General’s Office. The office is prosecuting Menzies’ case and advocating for his execution, while communicating with the state’s Department of Corrections and Department of Health and Human Services, which are tasked with the competency review.
Utah executes Taberon Honie by lethal injection, first capital punishment since 2010
It’s unclear what the agencies were communicating about. But that still poses a conflict of interest, said Eric Zuckerman, Menzies’ attorney, during Wednesday’s hearing. Those three agencies are supposed to be independent, he argued —- the prosecution should not be influencing what’s supposed to be a fair and impartial assessment of Menzies’ competency.
“They are working together. The conflict is there,” said Zuckerman. “They’re talking to each other. They’re not just emailing, but they’re talking to each other. There’s nothing this court can do to make this right again, because the independance has been violated.”
Attorneys for the state pushed back on the idea that their correspondence with the departments of Health and Human Services and Corrections is anything beyond information that’s already public. Zuckerman has not provided any evidence that there is anything happening between the three agencies that could sway the competency review, they said on Wednesday.
“There simply needs to be more concrete evidence of some collusion or some nefarious undertaking of the state, and I don’t see it here in Mr. Menzies’ motion,” said Daniel Boyer with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, telling the court that the “idea that we’re somehow influencing DHHS, you’re not going to see that if these emails are disclosed.”
Rather than handing over email correspondence between the agencies, the state’s lawyers say they should be protected under attorney-client privilege. Zuckerman said that alone warrants the emails being handed over — if it can be protected by attorney-client privilege, it goes beyond the scope of what’s allowed to be discussed between the three agencies.
“If counsel for the Utah Department of Corrections and counsel for Department of Health and Human Services are providing advice, direction or guidance to the prosecution,” Zuckerman said, “that is absolutely relevant.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Ultimately, Bates ordered the state to hand over the emails, but for Zuckerman, that’s not enough. When asked whether viewing the emails would put to rest any concerns that there is still a conflict of interest, Zuckerman said no.
“It doesn’t change the fact they’ve admitted to working together. … There’s a clear remedy in this case and that remedy is to assign someone else,” he said.
Bates said he will determine whether the Attorney General’s Office should be thrown off the case in the next 14 days. If the judge rules in Menzies’ favor and disqualifies the Attorney General’s Office, it could delay when Menzies’ competency review takes place.
Court will hear whether Menzies is competent enough to be executed
Menzies was diagnosed with dementia in March 2023 after he fell several times, according to court documents. After an MRI exam, he was shown to have brain atrophy, where the brain’s tissue deteriorates, leading to memory loss and a decline in cognitive function.
It’s unclear whether his mental state is so dire that he’ll be deemed incompetent to be executed, a high bar that is rarely met in capital punishment cases.
Per Utah code, the assessment must consider whether Menzies is aware of his impending execution and if he knows his murder conviction is the reason. The assessment also should determine the nature of his mental disorder and whether psychoactive medication is necessary to “maintain or restore the inmate’s competency.”
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
Menzies kidnapped Hunsaker in 1986 while she was working as a cashier at a gas station in Kearns. He took her up Big Cottonwood Canyon and kept her overnight in a picnic area, according to court documents. Two days later, her body was found tied to a tree with her throat slashed.
Menzies would be the second death row inmate to face a firing squad in recent decades, following Ronnie Lee Garnder’s execution in 2010.
In Utah, death row inmates sentenced before May 2004 had a choice between lethal injection and firing squad. For those sentenced after 2004, the default method of execution is lethal injection, unless the necessary drugs are not available.
This past August, Utah carried out its first death sentence since Gardner, executing Taberon Honie by lethal injection.