INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana officials are preparing to execute the state’s first death row inmate in 15 years, who was convicted of killing his brother and three other people a quarter century ago.
Joseph Corcoran, 49, has been on death row in Indiana since 1999. If he is sentenced to death as scheduled on Wednesday, it will be the state’s first execution since 2009. At the time, 13 executions had been carried out in Indiana, but they were initiated and performed by federal officials at a federal prison in 2020 and 2021.
Corcoran is scheduled to be executed before sunrise Wednesday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Chicago.
The resumption of executions in Indiana is putting a renewed focus on Corcoran’s case and raising questions about how the state is able to obtain the drug for lethal injection.
What was Corcoran convicted of?
Corcoran was 22 years old on July 26, 1997, when he shot his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran, and three other men: Douglas A. Stilwell, 30, Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and Robert Scott Turner, 32.
According to court records, Joseph Corcoran was stressed because his sister’s upcoming wedding to Turner would require him to move out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he lived with his brother and sister.
Records show that he woke up after hearing his brother and other people downstairs talking about him, loaded his rifle and then shot all four people.
While in prison, Corcoran allegedly bragged about shooting his parents in Steuben County, northern Indiana, in 1992. He was charged with their murders but acquitted.
Corcoran’s brother protests execution
Corcoran’s sister, Kelly Ernst, who lost a brother and her fiancé in the 1997 shooting, declined to discuss whether she believed her younger brother killed their parents. .
But Ernst, who lives in northeastern Indiana, said she believes the death penalty should be abolished and that her brother’s execution won’t solve or change anything. She does not plan to attend his execution.
Ernst said she had been out of contact with her brother for 10 years until recently. He believes it is “pretty clear” that he has a serious mental illness.
“I feel like there’s no such thing as closure,” Ernst, 56, said Friday. “I don’t know what else to say. “I haven’t slept in weeks.”
Why did Indiana stop executions?
Indiana last executed Matthew Wrinkles, who was put to death in 2009 for the 1994 murders of his wife, her brother and sister-in-law.
State officials said they could not continue executions because the combination of drugs used in lethal injections had become unavailable. Nationwide shortages have persisted for years because pharmaceutical companies – especially in Europe, where opposition to the death penalty is strongest – have refused to sell their products for this purpose.
This has led states to turn to compounding pharmacies, which make medications specifically for the customer. Some states have switched to more accessible drugs like the sedative pentobarbital or midazolam, both of which critics say can cause excruciating pain.
Indiana is following that lead, planning to use pentobarbital to execute Corcoran.
The federal government also used pentobarbital in 13 federal executions carried out during the last six months of then-President Donald Trump’s first term.
secret source of medicine
Many states, including Indiana, refuse to disclose where they get their drugs. Asked how the state obtained pentobarbital, which it plans to use in Corcoran’s execution, the Indiana Department of Corrections directed the Associated Press to a state law requiring the source of lethal injection drugs be confidential. Went.
In June, Governor Eric Holcomb announced that the state had acquired pentobarbital and asked the Indiana Supreme Court to set a date for Corcoran’s execution. The High Court in September fixed December 18 as his execution date.
State Implementation Plan
State law sets specific timing and procedures. It also limits those who have a role in executions to anonymity and specifies who may witness an execution at the Indiana State Prison.
At the time of execution, Indiana Code states that only the prison warden, those selected to assist in the execution, the prison physician, an additional physician, the condemned person’s spiritual advisor, and the prison chaplain are allowed to be present.
A maximum of five friends or relatives of the person being hanged and a maximum of eight relatives of the victims of the crime are allowed to witness the process.
The Indiana Department of Correction did not respond to multiple questions from the AP, including whether any of the employees who helped carry out Corcoran’s execution had previously participated in state executions.
No media can watch Indiana’s execution
According to a recent report from the Death Penalty Information Center, Indiana is one of only two states, along with Wyoming, that does not allow members of the news media to witness the state’s executions.
That report said, “Unobstructed media access to executions is important because the media sees what the public cannot. States generally prevent citizens from attending executions, so the media becomes the public’s watchdog, providing vital information about how the government is following the law and using taxpayer money. Is.
Is there a fight to stop the hanging?
Corcoran exhausted his federal appeals in 2016.
His lawyers asked the Indiana Supreme Court to stop his execution, but on December 5, his execution was denied. The high court also rejected petitions arguing whether he was competent to be hanged.
In a handwritten affidavit to the judges, Corcoran said he no longer wished to litigate his case.
“I plead guilty to the crimes of which I was convicted and accept the findings of all appellate courts,” he wrote.
On Wednesday, his lawyers filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana asking the court to stop his execution and hold a hearing to decide whether it would be unconstitutional because Corcoran has a serious mental illness.
They argued that he has “severe and long-lasting paranoid schizophrenia” and that his condition “manifests auditory hallucinations and delusions that prison guards are torturing him with an ultrasound machine.”
The filing states, “In fact, he has volunteered to be hanged, and is eager to be hanged, because he believes that his execution will relieve him of the perceived pain that his delusions are causing.” And the hallucinations have delivered him.”
But on Friday, the federal district court declined to intervene, forcing defense lawyers to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.
There is also a possibility that outgoing Governor Eric Holcomb, who has said he will let the legal process proceed, could intervene.
Indiana Disability Rights, a disability rights organization, in a letter dated December 6 asked Holcomb to commute the sentence to death in prison without parole.
“Executing individuals who cannot fully understand their circumstances or the consequences of their actions violates basic principles of human dignity and equality,” the letter said.
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