For the first time in 15 years, Utah is preparing for a firing squad execution. The inmate in question is Ralph Leroy Menzies, the murderer of Maurine Hunsaker. His execution date has been set for Sept. 5, 2025, which is 40 years after Menzies’ conviction.

Utah’s corrections system has failed both the Hunsaker family and Menzies himself. Despite the horrific actions Menzies committed, Utah is making a mistake in his execution. Utah needs to rethink its decision to revive execution by firing squad.

Menzies and Consent in Execution

Ralph Leroy Menzies’ early life is unimportant. What matters is the fact that he is a murderer. On February 23, 1986, Menzies kidnapped and murdered Maurine Hunsaker.

Maurine was a 26-year-old woman working at a gas station in Kearns, Utah. Her body was found on Feb. 25 in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Menzies was subsequently investigated and charged with Hunsaker’s murder on March 8, 1988.

That year, he received the death sentence and has been on death row ever since. He was first sentenced to die in 1988 and later in 2003. Both of those dates were delayed through legal proceedings.

Menzies has been on death row for 40 years, avoiding his execution and surviving into his late 60s. He has developed dementia and has rapidly deteriorated, now relying on supplemental oxygen and a wheelchair. His attorneys remark that his execution would be “inhumane.”

“His execution will serve no purpose than to turn the inevitability of death into a needless display of violence.” His attorneys say that Menzies rapidly approaches his third execution date.

In 2004, when asked how he wanted to be executed, Menzies loudly exclaimed, “Shoot me.” Despite his previous consent to death by firing squad, his current mental and physical state should deem him incompetent for execution.

An Eye For an Eye

It cannot be disregarded that Menzies is a murderer. He kidnapped and killed a woman in cold blood. Holding him accountable for his evil is necessary, but it should not take the form of an additional death.

Menzies has already endured punishment for his crime. He’s spent upwards of 40 years in the Utah County Jail, where his health has deteriorated during his incarceration.

Menzies wouldn’t be the only person affected by his execution. Witnessing a death by firing squad is intensely traumatic due to the violent nature of the execution.

Jeffery Collins, a journalist for ABC News, has been a witness to many executions in South Carolina, including the firing squad execution of murderer Brad Sigmon.

He recalls in this article, “I’ve now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon.”

“The firing squad is certainly faster — and more violent — than lethal injection. It’s a lot more tense, too.” He continues to recount the deaths that haunt him. “Etched in my mind: Sigmon talking or mouthing toward his lawyer, trying to let him know he was OK …”

Studies on firing squad execution are inconclusive. Research that studies speed, pain and ease of death in execution methods mainly finds firing squad deaths to be enigmatic, unsure if pain was felt.

This doesn’t mean that other execution methods are necessarily better than by gunfire. Death by lethal injection, one of the most common forms of execution, has the highest error rate of all execution methods. Even sourcing the drugs used in executions is hard due to a recent drug shortage.

These botched executions can cause inmates to suffer for minutes or hours before their deaths.

The inconclusive data of execution by firearm can seem more appealing than the risk of drawn-out suffering by lethal injection, but even firearm execution can go wrong. A man in South Carolina suffered a prolonged death of “excruciating conscious pain and suffering for about 30 to 60 seconds after he was shot.”

The death penalty should be a place where the classic tale of “an eye for an eye” shouldn’t be followed.

Living the rest of your life in incarceration is a more taxing punishment than most people realize. An intense push for execution is unnecessary.

The Lack of Justice For the Hunsakers

Matt Hunsaker was 11 years old when Menzies killed his mother. Even over 40 years of missed execution dates and Menzies asking for new attorneys and lawyers frequently, Matt has regularly appeared in the courtroom to seek justice for his mother.

When asked about the time it’s taken officials to execute Menzies, Matt said,  “I just want to put it out there — this man took my mom from a gas station where she was trying to support her family.”

After Menzies was ordered a new execution date, Matt made this statement. “[Menzies’] life will be over in mere seconds. My mom, we don’t know how long she stood and suffered in that grove, how long she bled to death, and how she felt.”

There are many parallels between my life and Matt’s. I grew up in Kearns, Utah, to a single mother of three, like Maurine was. My mom worked at a gas station in Kearns. When I first began researching this case, Maurine reminded me intensely of my mother. What Menzies did to her, and subsequently to her family, sickens me.

Matt’s 40-year-long advocacy for his mother is both admirable and understandable. This article is not meant to discredit his right to champion for Menzies’ death, but to serve as a warning against death by firing squad, especially for inmates who have lost their autonomy as severely as Menzies has.

I believe that Menzies serving the rest of his life in custody is a severe punishment that is more morally sound than executing him by firearm.

Utah’s revival of firing squad executions is a severe mistake. Utah needs to tread carefully with this decision and re-evaluate Menzies’ capacity to consent to this death penalty.

Living a life in incarceration is already a severe punishment. The addition of the death penalty is unnecessary, especially when it’s as extreme as death by firing squad.

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