A federal magistrate has ruled that condemned killer Ralph LeRoy Menzies is not yet entitled to federally appointed attorneys.
Menzies' attorney, Mary C. Corporon, had petitioned the court to appoint her and three other lawyers to assist the death-row inmate in various legal matters.After exhausting his state court appeals, Menzies might eventually petition the federal court for what's called habeas corpus relief to avoid execution.
However, U.S. Magistrate Ronald Boyce said, "At this stage, that is problematical and not imminent. State remedies have not been exhausted."
In a three-page ruling released this week, Boyce wrote that Congress never intended to authorize the appointment of counsel in federal court until federal proceedings were imminent.
Since Menzies has a number of legal avenues still open to him in state courts, his request for federal lawyers is "premature, ex parte (one sided) and insufficiently specific," Boyce said.
Menzies was sentenced to death in 1988 for the murder of Maurine Hunsaker. The victim, a mother of four, was kidnapped from a convenience store on the night of Feb. 23, 1986. Her body was discovered two days later in Big Cottonwood Canyon. She had been strangled and her throat had been slashed.
Menzies selected the firing squad as the method of his execution.