Utah is making ready to execute Ralph Leroy Menzies for the 1986 theft and homicide of Maurine Hunsaker. Scott Pierce of the Salt Lake Metropolis Tribune reports that after a long time of appeals, Menzies has run out of additional alternatives to delay his execution. This morning the Utah Lawyer Basic requested a District Court docket Choose to signal an order for Menzies’ execution by firing squad. Whereas that technique of execution was Menzies selection, in December he and three different condemned murderers claimed that it was merciless and strange punishment which violates the Eighth Modification. That declare was rejected. It might be the primary time a assassin has been executed in Utah since 2010.
Information revealed within the September 23, 2014, determination upholding Menzies conviction and dying sentence by a unanimous Utah Supreme Court docket, describe the brutal and cold-blooded homicide of a 26-year-old mom of three. Mrs. Hunsaker was kidnapped on the night of February 23, 1986, from a gasoline station the place she labored. When she didn’t return her husband’s telephone calls, he contacted the police. About an hour later Mrs. Hunsaker known as her husband at their dwelling telling him that she had been kidnapped and robbed, however that the kidnapper would set her free later that night or the subsequent morning. Then the road went lifeless. Two days later, a hiker discovered her physique within the picnic space of a wooded park. She had been strangled and her throat had been slit. Proof discovered by police indicated that she had been tied to a tree earlier than being murdered. Whereas police had been investigating, Menzies was jailed for an unrelated housebreaking. Guards discovered Mrs. Hunsaker’s identification along with his belongings. Substantial proof satisfied the jury of Menzies’ guilt, together with the sufferer’s fingerprints on Menzies automotive, witnesses who noticed Menzies lead the sufferer into the park the morning after she was kidnapped, then heard a girl scream a short while later. After his conviction Menzies requested a bench trial for the penalty part. The Choose sentenced him to dying. $116 was stolen from the gasoline station cashbox the evening Mrs. Hunsager was kidnapped. That’s how a lot her life was price to the assassin.
