By Vanguard Staff
SALT LAKE CITY, UT – A Utah judge has issued an execution warrant for Ralph Menzies, a 67-year-old man with advanced vascular dementia who now uses a wheelchair, requires continuous oxygen, and is unable to articulate why he is being executed.
The warrant, signed July 9 by Salt Lake County District Court Judge Matthew Bates, sets Menzies’s execution date for September 5, 2025, even as his legal team pursues ongoing appeals and a new petition asserting his further cognitive decline since a prior competency ruling.
Menzies’s attorney, Lindsey Layer, emphasized that the warrant does not change the medical reality of her client’s condition. “Ralph Menzies is a severely brain-damaged man with worsening dementia,” she said in a public statement. “He is dependent on oxygen, unable to walk without assistance, and exhibits the unmistakable signs of dementia familiar to anyone who has cared for a loved one with this devastating disease.”
A second competency petition filed July 7 outlines new expert evaluations that find Menzies no longer understands even the basic reasons for his execution. The petition, supported by detailed medical documentation, asserts that Menzies’s dementia has advanced to the point that he lacks both a rational understanding of his punishment under U.S. Supreme Court precedent and basic awareness under Utah law.
The experts’ findings are based on recent examinations conducted in June 2025. Neurologist Dr. Thomas Hyde and neuropsychologist Dr. Lynette Abrams-Silva both concluded that Menzies no longer demonstrates awareness of why he is to be executed or even that his sentence is connected to the murder conviction that sent him to death row. In prior evaluations, Menzies was at least able to recite that he had been sentenced for the killing of Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. He now simply says, “They want to,” or “They tell me bye-bye,” when asked why he is facing execution.
These observations reflect a steep decline in both physical and mental functioning. Since the last evidentiary hearing in May 2025, Menzies has suffered a severe hypoxic event, with blood oxygen levels dropping below 85%, a level known to cause significant neurological damage. Prison health staff now require him to use an oxygen tank full-time and have assigned a medical aide under the Americans with Disabilities Act because he can no longer dress himself, retrieve meals, or clean his cell.
Medical records from early 2025 document a pattern of worsening shortness of breath, debilitating fatigue, and balance issues. By mid-spring, Menzies was frequently too weak to get out of bed, and could no longer manage daily activities without assistance. Physical therapists noted his increasing confusion and inability to explain what medical care he was receiving, including whether he had access to his oxygen tank.
Experts for both the defense and the state have acknowledged that Menzies suffers from a progressive, degenerative brain condition. Vascular dementia, caused by reduced blood flow to the brain, worsens over time and can be accelerated by conditions such as uncontrolled hypertension and oxygen deprivation—both of which Menzies has experienced in recent months.
Beyond his present-day incompetence, Menzies’s case is riddled with long-standing legal and procedural problems. He was convicted based on jailhouse informant testimony that has since been recanted, and eyewitness identifications that were manipulated through suggestive police lineups. The informant, whose statements helped secure Menzies’s death sentence, admitted years later that he lied in hopes of a lighter sentence for his own charges.
Menzies’s trial attorneys failed to investigate or present critical mitigating evidence, including the extensive physical and sexual abuse he endured during childhood. Post-conviction lawyers also failed to conduct meaningful reviews, prompting the Utah Supreme Court to return the case for a second round of post-conviction proceedings. Still, no substantial new evidence was presented because the replacement attorneys likewise failed to do the necessary work.
Further complicating matters, there is no reliable record of the trial proceedings. The original court reporter was unlicensed and did not produce a verbatim transcript. Instead, she handed her shorthand notes to a note reader, who combined them with unrelated police reports and the judge’s own notes to fabricate a trial transcript. Key portions of this “transcript” were invented or pulled from inadmissible documents, making it impossible to fully review or challenge the conduct of the trial.
Even the sentencing judge has since acknowledged that the death sentence should not stand. In a 2010 affidavit, he admitted misapplying Utah’s aggravating factors and failing to properly weigh unrebutted evidence of mental illness. He concluded that life imprisonment would have been the appropriate sentence. Yet the Utah Supreme Court and federal courts declined to reverse the sentence.
Menzies has spent nearly four decades in prison without a single act of violence. Once housed in solitary confinement, he is now in a general population pod and considered a model prisoner. He poses no danger to others.
His attorneys are now asking the court to reevaluate his competency based on new evidence. Under Utah law, if a prisoner is unaware of either the punishment or the reason for it due to a mental condition, the execution cannot proceed. A new hearing, if granted, would likely center on whether Menzies’s rapidly advancing dementia now places him squarely within that statutory definition.
