- The Utah Attorney General's Office seeks expedited competency proceedings for death row inmate Ralph Menzies.
- Menzies' attorneys argue the court lacks jurisdiction pending appellate proceedings.
- The Utah Supreme Court vacated Menzies' death warrant citing need for a new competency hearing.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Attorney General's Office wants to put the new competency proceedings for death row inmate Ralph Leroy Menzies on the fast track.
But Menzies' attorneys say the state is already jumping the gun.
Last week, the Utah Supreme Court vacated Menzies' death warrant — just one week before his scheduled execution by firing squad — ruling that the district court erred by not allowing him a new competency hearing.
On Wednesday, the attorney general's office filed a motion in 3rd District Court "for expedited competency proceedings" and requested that one of their two experts be allowed to examine Menzies in person next week and the other during the first week of October.
Menzies' attorneys, however, say the district court doesn't have the authority to do that yet.
"This court presently lacks jurisdiction to consider them, as appellate proceedings remain pending and remittitur has not yet issued," Menzies' attorneys argued in their motion to have the state's motion for expedited proceedings stricken. "The state filed these motions despite knowing that this court lacks jurisdiction to act on them.
"The state is attempting to litigate Mr. Menzies' competency simultaneously in the Supreme Court and in this court. Implicit in its request for remittitur is the recognition that jurisdiction remains with the Supreme Court until the appellate process concludes and remittitur issues," the defense continued. "Despite conceding in its Supreme Court filing that this court presently lacks jurisdiction, the state nevertheless filed five motions here. This is not a mere procedural misstep; it is a calculated act of defiance. The state knows it cannot litigate in this court until remitter issues. It asked the Supreme Court for that very relief. Yet, in deliberate disregard for jurisdictional limits, it filed here anyway."
Menzies, 67, was convicted of kidnapping and brutally murdering Maurine Hunsaker, 26, in 1986. Following decades of appeals and legal proceedings, a judge ruled on June 6 that Menzies was competent for execution and signed a death warrant to be carried out just after midnight on Friday.
Menzies' attorneys, however, say his vascular dementia has since progressed to the point that he no longer understands the reasons for his death sentence. The Utah Supreme Court last week agreed that the district court judge should have granted a new competency hearing and should not have signed Menzies' death warrant knowing that his defense team was appealing the June 6 ruling.
"We acknowledge that this uncertainty has caused the family of Maurine Hunsaker immense suffering, and it is not our desire to prolong that suffering. But we are bound by the rule of law, and the law dictates that if Menzies makes a prima facie showing a substantial change of circumstances that raises a significant question about his competency to be executed, a district court must reevaluate his competency, even though it may cause additional delay," the high court wrote in its decision.
