Utah death row inmate with dementia dies 3 months after court blocked his execution

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah man who was spared execution this fall after developing dementia during his 37 years on death row died Wednesday of apparent natural causes, according to the state’s Department of Corrections.

Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was set to die by firing squad in September, but the Utah Supreme Court blocked the impending execution in August after his attorneys argued his dementia had become too severe. A judge had scheduled a new competency hearing for mid-December to reevaluate his mental state.

Menzies was convicted of abducting and killing 26-year-old mother of three Maurine Hunsaker near Salt Lake City in 1986. Her body was discovered two days later.

Her husband, Jim Hunsaker, told the Associated Press he felt a “happy feeling” when he heard Menzies had died, and as though 100 pounds had been lifted off him.

“I think a lot of it is going to be just healing now,” he said. “I don’t think there was a day that I didn’t think about it.”

He expressed frustration about how the state’s judicial system handled the case, saying his family for decades has experienced “one disappointment after another.”

“It seems like everything went his way,” he said.

Menzies would have been the seventh U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977, when the U.S. reinstated the death penalty. He selected the method when given a choice decades ago.

The Utah Supreme Court said this summer that the progression of Menzies’ disease raised a significant question on his fitness to be executed. A state medical professional agreed in a new mental competency report published this month, saying Menzies lacked a rational understanding of why he was facing execution.

He’s one of numerous U.S. prisoners who have died naturally while on death row.

More than half of all prisoners sentenced to death in the U.S. spend more than 18 years awaiting execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Menzies abducted Hunsaker from a convenience store where she worked on Feb. 23, 1986, while he was on parole. She later called her husband to say she was robbed and kidnapped, and that her abductor intended to release her. Days later, a hiker found her body at a picnic area about 16 miles away in Big Cottonwood Canyon. She had been strangled and her throat was slashed.

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said he hopes Hunsaker’s family will finally have some closure and peace.

“For decades, the state of Utah has pursued justice on her behalf. The path has been long and filled with pain, far more than any victim’s family should ever have to endure,” Brown said.

Police say Hunsaker’s thumbprint was found in a car that Menzies was driving, and her purse was recovered in Menzies’ apartment. Menzies also had her wallet and other belongings when he was jailed on unrelated matters.

“We’re grateful that Ralph passed naturally and maintained his spiritedness and dignity until the end,” his legal team said in a statement.

Utah’s last execution played out by lethal injection just over a year ago. The state hasn’t used a firing squad since the 2010 execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner.