Menzies’ attorneys petition to reevaluate competency ruling, cite ‘significant’ decline in health

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Attorneys for convicted death row killer Ralph Leroy Menzies are petitioning the court for a reevaluation of his competency, citing a “significant decline” in cognitive function.

Menzies was convicted in 1988 for the 1986 aggravated murder, kidnapping, and robbery of Maurine Hunsaker. He was placed on death row, where he has remained for the last 37 years as appeals have been filed.

Today, Menzies’ lawyers are arguing that Menzies “has undergone significant physical and cognitive decline,” according to medical evaluations from June 27 and 30, 2025. According to doctors, he has declined in the eight months since his last neuropsychologist visit.

“He no longer exhibits an awareness that he is being executed for the crime of murder. As a result, he fails to meet both the constitutional standard of rational understanding and now, Utah’s statutory requirement that a person be aware of the reason for their execution,” Menzies’ lawyers state in the petition.

According to lawyers, Menzies has also experienced several medical events, including at least one “major hypoxic episode,” or a period of time with low oxygen, that contributed to the decline of his health. He has now been given an oxygen tank to provide him “continuous access to supplemental oxygen” due to that episode.

Attorneys are asking the court to reevaluate Menzies’ competency based on his recent decline in health. They argue that the filing of this petition mandates a stay on the execution proceedings, and that denying a stay would risk an “unconstitutional execution.”

Timeline in the competency ruling

According to documents, on Feb. 13, 2024, the court ordered that all “proceedings advancing toward execution are stayed pending the resolution of Meznie’s petition into competency.” They canceled a hearing set later that month for the State’s application for an execution warrant.

The 67-year-old man has dementia, his defense citing a “significant decline” in May 2025. Last month, on June 6, Menzies was ruled competent for execution after 16 months of back-and-forth and competency hearings.

Days later, on June 9, the State filed a motion to lift the stay on Menzie’s execution and hold a hearing for an application for an execution warrant on the “soonest available date.”

On June 10, attorneys for Ralph Menzies filed an appeal to the Utah Supreme Court over the competency ruling. They state that “despite a proper medical diagnosis of vascular dementia, Mr. Menzies has failed to demonstrate that he is competent to be executed.”

Who is Ralph Menzies?

On February 23, 1986, Maurine Hunsaker was abducted from the Gas-A-Mat convenience store and gas station in Kearns, Utah, where she was employed. Her husband called the convenience store and went in person when she did not pick up. When he arrived, he found that Hunsaker was missing, along with her purse.

According to documents, Hunsaker called the home phone and told her husband that she had been instructed to tell him she was kidnapped and robbed. A police officer spoke with Hunsaker, and she indicated that the kidnapper intended to release her.

Days later, on February 25, 1986, a hiker found Hunsaker deceased near a picnic area in Big Cottonwood Canyon. She had been strangled to death, according to the medical examiner, and her throat was cut. Marks on her wrists and scuffing on a nearby tree indicated that she had been tied to it somehow.

During this time, Menzies was booked into jail on an unrelated burglary charge. When officers were taking his possessions, Menzies ran away and hid in a changing room. Later, identification cards were located in the changing room’s hamper, and an officer realized that they belonged to Hunsaker.

Witnesses further connected Menzies to the disappearance and murder of Maurine Hunsaker, and some had even seen him with her on the night of her murder. In 1988, a jury found Menzies guilty, and he was placed on death row for the serious and senseless crime.