Judge to decide future of Utah’s death penalty

By Ben Winslow

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    SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) — A judge will decide whether a group of inmates can proceed with a lawsuit challenging Utah’s death penalty.

Five death row inmates — Ralph Menzies, Troy Kell, Michael Archuleta, Douglas Carter and Taberon Honie — are suing the state, challenging the methods and protocols surrounding their pending executions. In arguments, their attorney argued it was cruel and unusual punishment and accused the state of not providing details about how executions are carried out.

“The state could execute plaintiffs by using indisputably torturous drugs and plaintiffs would have no way to challenge that,” the inmates’ attorney, Cory Talbot, argued to the judge.

On Thursday, 3rd District Court Judge Coral Sanchez heard arguments over a request by the Utah Attorney General’s Office to dismiss the lawsuit.

Lethal injection remains the state’s primary method of execution. However, if the state lacks the chemicals necessary to carry out such an execution, the Utah legislature recently modified laws to allow firing squad to become the default method. In the past, the Utah Department of Corrections has told FOX 13 News it does not have the chemicals for lethal injection.

But the Utah Attorney General’s Office told the judge on Thursday that the agency believes the law allows them to use similar chemicals.

“The protocol does not need to be modified,” assistant Utah Attorney General David Wolf argued. “The absence of sodium thiopental was anticipated. The state is free to either obtain sodium thiopental if they can, compound a similar drug, obtain similar drugs that are effective at causing death and if none of those are available? The firing squad.”

Wolf argued that the inmates were, in some cases, decades too late in bringing up challenges to the death penalty in court.

“With respect to the death penalty, that is the punishment. Death and execution is the punishment. So if they can’t come up with an alternative method to execute these prisoners, you’re essentially outlawing the death penalty,” he told Judge Sanchez.

The judge did not issue a ruling immediately. Instead, Judge Sanchez said she would weigh the arguments and issue a ruling within a month or so.

Of Utah’s seven death row inmates, only one has an execution that is imminent. FOX 13 News reported last week that Menzies, who was sentenced to death for the 1986 murder of Maurine Hunsaker, has exhausted his appeals and the Utah Attorney General’s Office was likely to seek his execution early next year.

Menzies and Kell have opted to die by firing squad, the attorney general’s office said. Kell, Honie and Carter have chosen to die by lethal injection.

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