A Utah judge is deliberating whether a man who has been on death row for 37 years and now suffers from dementia can be executed. Attorneys argue that his cognitive decline renders him incapable of understanding the reason for his execution, raising ethical and legal concerns about proceeding with the death penalty in such cases.
A Utah judge is deliberating whether Ralph Leroy Menzies, a 67-year-old death row inmate diagnosed with dementia, is mentally competent to be executed. Menzies was sentenced to death in 1988 for the 1986 abduction and murder of 26-year-old Maurine Hunsaker, a mother of three.
