A Utah firing squad is scheduled to execute Ralph Menzies Sept. 5 for the 1986 murder of Maurine Hunsaker. The 67-year-old has been in a Utah prison for 37 years and now has vascular dementia. His defense argues that he is mentally incompetent to be executed.
Menzies’ case is emblematic of a growing problem in prisons across the country.
According to a 2022 American Bar Association study, state prisoners aged 55 and older increased by 400% from 1993 to 2013. The report predicted that the age group will account for a third of the U.S. prison population by 2030. As the U.S. population ages, inside and outside of prisons, a rise in dementia is expected to follow.
The study’s authors interviewed correctional health and legal field stakeholders to learn about their experiences with people with dementia in the criminal legal system. They found that there hadn’t been a systematic effort to understand the impact of age-related brain changes in criminal prosecution or the corrections system.
Elizabeth Kelley, a criminal defense lawyer and editor of the 2022 book “Representing People With Dementia: A Practical Guide for Criminal Defense Lawyers,” said the risk of age-related illnesses in the U.S. prison system is growing for a couple of different reasons.
First, she pointed to the downstream effects of mandatory sentencing and the three strikes law that result in enhanced sentencing.
“There are all of those sorts of penalties that keep people in prison for years, if not decades,” Kelley said. “Secondly, because more Americans are living longer, they are experiencing cognitive issues as well as health issues as they grow older.”
And Kelley said the penal system is simply not prepared to handle age-related diseases.
“Jails and prisons are not treatment facilities, and they are certainly not assisted living centers and are not facilities with memory care units. Now there are some attempts in some states to have small units that are appropriate for aging prisoners, but it is basically a drop in the bucket.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pamela McCall: Utah recognizes Ralph Mezies’ dementia diagnosis, but says he still has sufficient cognitive function to understand the punishment. What's the process for determining that?
Elizabeth Kelley: In cases of dementia, it comes down to battles between forensic neuropsychologists and neuropsychiatrists. Different qualified professionals could arrive at very, very different conclusions. But, the Constitution requires that the convicted person must be competent all the way through the criminal process, including, as perverse as it sounds, at the moment of execution, meaning that one must understand why one is being subjected to the ultimate punishment.
PM: The son of the victim, Matt Hunsaker, says the defense’s argument that a dementia diagnosis means Ralph Menzies shouldn’t be executed is a ruse to avoid punishment. How does his perspective fit in?
EK: No one can minimize the grief that families of victims are experiencing, and this family has been living with this case for almost 40 years. That being said, it is good that, in this system, we have full and meaningful death penalty litigation and that defense counsel are afforded every opportunity to try to mitigate the penalty in order to save their client’s life.
PM: Given that dementia cases are on the rise with an aging prison population, where are cases like this ultimately headed?
EK: Prison facilities can do a couple of things. Either they can try and appropriately accommodate those individuals, give them all the support they need, from a medical standpoint, to deal with late-in-life issues. Or, if the laws in that jurisdiction allow, releasing individuals back into the community where they can be appropriately cared for and appropriately supervised.
PM: Even in the case of a convicted murderer?
EK: That is a different issue, because at this point in time, given our political climate and prevailing views, I can't imagine any scenario in which a death row inmate is summarily released into the community, absent of a finding of actual innocence.
