SALT LAKE CITY — Four inmates on death row have filed a lawsuit against the state of Utah, challenging its capital punishment statutes.
The lawsuit, filed in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court and obtained by FOX 13 News, asks a judge to strike down the death penalty in the state. It was filed by Ralph Menzies, Douglas Stewart Carter, Troy Kell and Michael Anthony Archuleta. All have been on death row for decades awaiting execution as their appeals make their way through the court system.
"Ensuring that prisoners are treated humanely is essential to maintain the integrity of Utah’s criminal justice system," Cory Talbot, an attorney for the condemned inmates, said in a statement to FOX 13 News on Wednesday. "This lawsuit seeks to protect the rights of prisoners to be free from unnecessary pain at the hands of the government."
Lethal injection is the primary method of execution in Utah. However, state law dictates that in the event that the chemicals necessary to carry out such an execution are unavailable, then firing squad becomes the primary method. Utah's Department of Corrections has said in the past it does not have the chemicals to carry out a lethal injection execution.
The last inmate to be executed was Ronnie Lee Gardner, who died by firing squad in 2010. The lawsuit claims that he did not die instantaneously.
"Utah's execution protocol creates substantial risk of a botched firing squad execution because, among other reasons, it creates a realistic possibility that one or more projectiles will miss the heart," the lawsuit states.
Lethal injection also poses problems, lawyers for the condemned inmates wrote.
"The Utah lethal injection protocol lacks sufficient detail and important safeguards to guard against maladministration of the lethal injection process," the lawsuit said.
It asks for an order "vacating UDC’s execution protocol and enjoining defendants and all person acting on their behalf from using the protocol, or any revised protocol, that violates plaintiffs’ rights and the law."
Governor Spencer Cox's office and the Utah Attorney General's Office declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Menzies is facing a death sentence for the 1986 kidnapping and murder of Maurine Hunsaker; Carter's death sentence, originally imposed in 1985 for the home invasion murder of Eva Olesen, was recently vacated by a Provo judge but is under appeal by the Utah Attorney General's Office; Archuleta is facing death for the 1988 torture-slaying of Southern Utah University student Gordon Ray Church; and Kell was sentenced to die for the 1994 murder of Lonnie Blackmon inside the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison.
