Who are Utah’s other death-row prisoners awaiting execution?

SALT LAKE CITY — Death-row inmate Taberon Honie, 48, is scheduled to die by lethal injection just after midnight on Thursday. This is the first execution in Utah since 2010.

Honie murdered his former girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Marie Benn, 49, in 1998 in Cedar City in Southern Utah.

The other inmates on Utah’s death row are Ralph Leroy Menzies, Troy Michael Kell, Michael Anthony Archuleta, Von Lester Taylor, Douglas Stewart Carter and Douglas Lovell.

Mother murdered by death-row inmate 

Matt Hunsaker, son of 1986 murder victim Marie Hunsaker, said following through with an execution is a turning point for the victim’s family. Menzies was convicted in 1988 on charges of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping of Matt’s mother.

“They can close this long chapter in their lives,” he said. “This is where they can begin to heal because they know that their grandmother was not killed and forgotten. They won’t have to relive the horror of going to court and focusing on the inmate. It won’t be about him; it will be about their family member from this point forward.”

Utah’s other inmates awaiting execution

• Kell, 56, was serving a life sentence in Nevada for the shooting death of James “Cotton” Kelly in 1986. He was transferred to the Utah State Prison in 1994. While at the Gunnison, Utah, prison, he killed inmate Lonnie Blackmon by stabbing him 67 times. He was sentenced to die by firing squad.
• Archuleta, 62, and co-defendant Lance Conway Wood were convicted in 1989. They were found guilty of the torture and murder of Southern Utah University student Gordon Church, 28, the year before. Archuleta is sentenced to die by lethal injection. In 2012, a judge halted the firing squad execution of Archuleta who sought to pursue an appeal in federal court.
• Taylor, 59, was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 1991 for the murders of Beth Potts, 70, and her daughter, Kaye Tiede, 49, at a Weber County cabin the year before. He was also convicted of shooting Tiede’s husband, Rolfe, who survived, burning the family cabin and kidnapping the Tiede’s two daughters.
• Douglas Stewart Carter, 68, was sentenced by lethal injection in 1985 for the stabbing and shooting murder of Eva Olesen in her Provo home earlier that year. In 2022, a 4th District judge vacated Carter’s death sentence conviction, ruling prosecutors and police had threatened a witness with jail and deportation and gave him money before Carter’s court trial.
• Lovell, 66, was sentenced in 1993 to die by lethal injection for the strangulation murder of Joyce Yost in 1985. He killed her to keep her from testifying in court that he had raped her in April of that year. In July 2024, the Utah Supreme Court overturned his death sentence, ruling Lovell had received ineffective counsel at his sentencing hearing, but upheld his murder conviction and sent the case to a lower court for resentencing.

Related:

• Police expect protest outside of execution of Taberon Honie
• Utah set for first execution in 14 years; how did we get here?