Ronnie Lee Gardner was the last man to be executed by firing squad in Utah. Fifteen years later, his little brother Randy Gardner wants to make sure no one else meets the same fate.
“Why do we kill people who kill people? Still, the killing is wrong,” Gardner said.
Ahead of Ralph Menzies’ Sept. 5 execution, Gardner and other anti-death penalty activists are calling for the state to show mercy. They say it’s a step toward their larger goal to abolish capital punishment in Utah.
Advocacy groups Utahns Against the Death Penalty and Death Penalty Action held an Aug. 20 presentation at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law to highlight the impacts of capital punishment. It featured speakers such as Gardner and Maurine Hunsaker’s biological daughter, Jennifer Herron, who was adopted at birth. Coordinator for Utahns Against the Death Penalty Michelle Beasley said they want to keep the conversation about the death penalty going, even when there isn’t an imminent execution.
Menzies was convicted in 1988 for the 1986 murder of 26-year-old Maurine Hunsaker. After 37 years on death row, he would be the second person to receive capital punishment in Utah in just over a year.
Menzies’ attorneys asked the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole for a commutation of his sentence to grant him life in prison. They argued the 67-year-old’s vascular dementia makes him mentally incompetent to be executed. In Utah and across the U.S., inmates must understand why they are being put to death. The board, however, declined the request and made no changes to his sentence.
Beasley said she wants mercy and forgiveness on the table. Carrying out Menzies’ execution in his current state, she said, would create a spectacle.
“He’s on oxygen, he's still sitting in a wheelchair, he's still dying of dementia. That part is not changing. He will die. The dementia will get him,” Beasley said. “And so, why do we need to shoot him?”
Decades after Menzies’ original sentencing, Gardner said justice is not being served.
In his experience, he doesn’t condone what Ronnie Lee Gardner did, but said his brother “turned his life around” after 25 years on death row. Similarly, he thinks Menzies isn’t the same person as when he committed his crimes.
In Gardner’s view, killing anyone is wrong, even as a punishment.
“On my brother's death certificate, it says homicide,” he said. “It's definitely, it's a murder.”
The death penalty creates a ripple of pain, Beasley said, and the state needs better resources for the victim’s families. Money spent on executions, she said, should go toward helping them heal.
Some family members of Maurine Hunsaker are in support of Menzies’ death sentence. During his clemency hearing last week, Hunsaker’s daughter Dana Stinson asked the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to “let justice finally be carried out.”
Utahns Against the Death Penalty started a petition to stop Menzies’ execution, which Beasley said they plan to deliver Sept. 4, the day before the scheduled execution, to the Utah State Capitol. The Utah Supreme Court will consider an appeal from Menzies’ defense Aug. 21. No matter the outcome, she said the group will keep going.
“We might not be able to stop Ralph Menzies from getting executed. But we damn well are going to try and still get it abolished in the state of Utah. That's the end goal.”
