A circuit court judge has decided the fate of Utah’s death penalty, dismissing a suit which challenged the state’s capital punishment laws.
The decision comes as the state’s attorney general’s office indicated the state is seeking a death warrant for one of the men on death row. The suit, filed by five plaintiffs on death row, challenged the state’s procedure for carrying out executions.
On Friday, Judge Coral Sanchez of Utah’s 3rd Circuit Court wrote in the decision to dismiss the suit that the “plaintiffs have offered no legal precedent or historical facts to support facts to support their interpretation of the cruel and unusual punishments clause: that a method of execution must result in instantaneous death.”
Sanchez also wrote, “Plaintiffs’ interpretation of Utah’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments requires a painless execution, not just a execution without severe pain.”
The five plaintiffs, Ralph Menzies, Douglas Stewart Carter, Troy Kell, Michael Archuleta and Taberon Honie, filed the suit as they wait for the state to carry out their sentences of death by execution.
The plaintiffs have 21 days to file a motion to amend the original complaint, otherwise the case will be dismissed without prejudice, Sanchez’s decision stated.
Sanchez issued the ruling after Utah Attorney General’s Office filed a motion to dismiss the suit.
On Friday, the Utah Attorney General’s Office posted the following statement on its website:
Today, Utah Third District Court Judge Coral Sanchez upheld Utah’s Death Penalty statute by granting a motion to dismiss filed by the Utah Attorney General’s Office. The Plaintiffs on the lawsuit were Ralph Menzies, Taberon Honie, Troy Kell, Douglas Carter and Michael Archuleta. The lawsuit claimed the methods the State uses to execute prisoners “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Menzies has exhausted all appeals of his death sentence. His execution will be scheduled when a death warrant is issued.
Menzies, Carter, Kell, Archuleta and Honie comprise the majority of the inmates waiting on death row in Utah. There are two other men in addition to the plaintiffs.
Those who were sentenced before May 3, 2004, can choose between lethal injection and firing squad. If a person was sentenced after that date, lethal injection is the only method of execution the state uses, unless lethal injection is ruled as unconstitutional or is unavailable. In those instances, the state allows the use of the firing squad.
The suit obtained by the Deseret News sought “a declaratory judgment that methods of execution challenged herein are unconstitutional under the Utah constitution.” It also requests that the court declare that Utah’s protocol for both firing squad and lethal injection violate the Utah Constitution “by subjecting Plaintiffs to unnecessary rigor and cruel and unusual punishment.”
In addition to seeking these declarations, the suit stated that one of the drugs used during lethal injection, sodium thiopental, is not available. “The FDA stated that sodium thiopental has no legal uses in the United States.” Without sodium thiopental available, the protocol allows the use of other drugs, which the suit says “creates a substantial likelihood that Defendants will use experimental and unsafe anesthetics, such as midazolam, in place of the unavailable sodium thiopental.”
The amended complaint attached partially redacted excerpts from Utah’s Execution Protocols and Procedures, an affidavit from medical doctor Jonathan Arden and “You Can’t Be Facing Death!” by Leslie Midgley.
The affidavit from Arden deals with Utah’s protocol around the firing squad. It stated “execution by firing squad under the current Utah protocol will not cause instantaneous or immediate death or unconsciousness.”
Two specific points Arden raised were that a target is placed over the heart without any guidance “that the anatomical location of the heart is accurately known by the person placing the target.” In addition, he wrote that the hood placed over the person being executed obscures “any facial expressions indicative of consciousness or pain.”
In the decision to dismiss the suit, Sanchez wrote, “Plaintiffs have identified potential problems with Utah’s current protocols, but have not advanced alternative protocols that would alleviate the current issues, such as a protocol about where to place a target on a person’s body to reduce the prolonged consciousness when being executed by a firing squad.”
The Utah Attorney General’s Office has indicated it is seeking a death warrant for one of the plaintiffs, Menzies.
Menzies was sentenced to death for the slaying of Maurine Hunsaker in 1986. A mother of three, Hunsaker was working late at night at a gas station in Kearns. She called her husband that night saying she was abducted and believed she’d be let go. Two days later, she was found dead near the Storm Mountain picnic area in Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Menzies was convicted in 1988 and has exhausted his appeals. According to the Utah Attorney General’s Office, the state is in the process of obtaining a death warrant for one of the plantiffs. His sentence is death by firing squad.
The other plaintiffs also await the death penalty:
- Carter was convicted of aggravated murder in the death of Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief.
- Archuleta was convicted of the murder of Gordon Ray Church.
- Kell was initially given a life sentence for the murder of James Kelly. He was later convicted of aggravated murder in the slaying of Lonnie Blackmon and given a death sentence in relation to that murder.
- Honie was convicted of aggravated murder and sexual assault of Claudia Benn.
Sanchez’s ruling comes amid a national conversation about the use of the firing squad for capital punishment, ignited by Idaho’s bill authorizing the use of firing squad if drugs cannot be obtained.
House Bill 186 was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little and the law went into effect on July 1. It came as some states were finding it difficult to source drugs to carry out executions. NPR reported that some “pharmaceutical companies blocked their drugs from being used in executions.”
Gerald Pizzuto, who has been sitting on death row since May 1986, has had his execution delayed multiple times. According to The Idaho Statesman, “Pizzuto’s attorneys argued that the state had operated in bad faith by obtaining the death warrants while knowing it lacked the lethal injection drugs required under Idaho law to execute their client.”
Pizzuto was convicted of felony murder in relation to the slayings of Delbert Herndon and Berta Herndon.
The last time Idaho carried out a person’s death sentence was in the case of Richard Leavitt. On June 12, 2012, Leavitt died by lethal injection for the murder of Danette Elg. Since implementing House Bill 186, Idaho has not carried out anyone’s death sentence.
Idaho joined a small group of states which allow for use of firing squad: Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina.
Utah abolished the use of the firing squad in 2004 through the passage of House Bill 180. Lethal injection was established as the method of death. The bill did not apply retroactively, which meant that those convicted prior to 2004 could choose to die by firing squad.
A previous attempt to overturn Utah’s death penalty did not succeed.
In the 2022 legislative session, then-Rep. Lowry Snow, R-Santa Clara, and Sen. Daniel McCay, R-Salt Lake, sponsored House Bill 147, which would have repealed the death penalty as a punishment for aggravated murder.
The bill was not passed and the death penalty was not repealed.
During that same period of time, Tom Brunker and Andrew Peterson wrote an opinion article in support of the death penalty for the Deseret News. They argued that the death penalty is only given rarely, repealing capital punishment wouldn’t save the state a significant amount of money and no person sentenced to death in Utah had later been found innocent.
“The arguments against the death penalty don’t address these public safety or proportional justice issues. And under scrutiny, the repeal arguments lack sufficient weight to counter them,” they wrote.
Amelia Powers Gardner wrote an opinion article in support of repealing Utah’s death penalty, arguing that it costs the state a significant amount of money, the media attention given to those on death row for years can harm the victims and an innocent person could be impacted by the death penalty.
“We all want to hold violent offenders responsible, but we need to recognize that the death penalty simply doesn’t work, is applied to people who are actually innocent, costs significant taxpayer dollars and harms victims by prolonging their suffering,” she wrote. “It’s a far better option to simply lock up these offenders and throw away the key — and if the state got it wrong and sentenced an innocent person, they would still be alive to release from prison.”