Utah judge schedules execution by firing squad for a man with dementia

City of Solt Lake – On Wednesday, a judge in the state of Utah set a date for a man with dementia who was in the death row for 37 years, even with his lawyers resuming and says his condition is getting worse.

On September 5, Ralph Leroy Menzes is scheduled to be executed on September 5 for kidnapping and killing, Utah State, for three Mourin Hunsaker in 1986. When he was chosen decades ago, Menzis chose the shooting team as a way to implement it. Only the sixth American prisoner who has been executed by the shooting squad will become since 1977.

Judge Matthew Bings signed the death order a month after his ruling from Menzies “constantly and rationally”, understanding the reason for his confrontation with the death despite the recent knowledge decline. Minizis’s lawyers submitted a petition to the court for his reassessment, but Pits said on Wednesday that the suspended appeal was not the basis for preventing him from setting an appointment.

However, Bates touched a hearing on July 23 to evaluate the new efficiency seam. Menzies’s lawyers say that his dementia has become so severe that he uses a wheelchair, depends on oxygen and cannot understand his legal case.

“We are still hoping that the courts or the compassion council will recognize the deep insecurity of the implementation of a man suffering from a sharp perception and a significant loss of memory,” said Lindsay Lieier, Menzis’s lawyer. “Taking the life of a person with a final disease no longer represents a threat to anyone whose mind and identity were overcome through dementia, does not serve justice or human decency.”

The assistant prosecutor Daniel Bouir said that the office of the Attah State Prosecutor has “full confidence” in the judge’s decision.

The United States Supreme Court has sometimes succeeded in dementia prisoners, including Alabama man in 2019 who killed a police officer. The Supreme Court said that the defendant was unable to understand the cause of their execution, because the execution does not carry out the revenge that society is searching for.

For Ibn Hunsaker Matt, who was 10 years old when his mother was killed, “it was difficult to swallow it to take this time” to achieve justice.

“You are issuing an order today, you start an operation for our family,” he told the judge on Wednesday. “It puts everyone around the clock. We have now presented another generation of my mother, and we still serve justice.”

Hensker, 26, was kidnapped by Menzis from a store where she worked on the Salt Lake City suburb of Kirins. It was later found strangled and cut her throat about 16 miles (25 km) in the Nuzha area in Big Coutonwood Canyon. Menzies had a Hunsaker and several other properties when he was imprisoned in unrelated matters. I was convicted of first -class death and other crimes in 1988.

For nearly four decades, Menzies’s lawyer has made many appeals that were delayed by the death penalty, whose date was set at least twice before being returned. He and other prisoners of the state of Utah were given before May 2004 a choice between the shooting squad and the deadly injection. For prisoners convicted of the state after that date, deadly injection is the default method unless the drugs are available.

Utah was executed by the last prisoner of fire in 2010, and South Carolina used this method for two men this year. Only three other states – Idaho, Mississippi and Akllahoma – allow the death squad to execute.

Menzies out of 10 people to be executed in seven states during the remaining period of 2025. Twenty -five men died in the United States due to the execution of the court so far this year.