Attorneys for the Fort Wayne man sitting on Indiana’s death row are pushing back against the State of Indiana’s recent request for an execution date.
Joseph Corcoran, now 49, was sentenced to death in 1999, convicted of murdering his brother James Corcoran, his sister’s fiancé Robert Scott Turner, and two of their friends: Timothy Bricker and Douglas Stillwell.
His case has wound through state and federal appeals courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back down. A final appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was denied nearly a decade ago, but no execution date has ever been set.
In his request to execute Corcoran filed earlier this summer, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said the state has now reacquired the drugs necessary to kill him.
At issue largely throughout Corcoran's multiple appeals is whether his significant mental illness has been properly taken into consideration in his capital sentence. Multiple doctors have found that he suffers from schizophrenia, with symptoms including delusions and hallucinations.
Those who knew Corcoran said during court proceedings that he had shown evidence of hallucinations and delusions in the early 1990s, according to court documents. And among those delusions recorded in documents are that prison staff is torturing him with an ultrasound machine. In 2003, three mental health experts testified he had not been competent to waive his appeals, which he had done at one point during the years after his sentencing.
Rokita argues that the matter of Corcoran’s mental illness has been settled and wants a date set to execute him with little delay.
"Direct appellate review of Corcoran's sentence concluded two decades ago," Rokita wrote in his reply to Corcoran's attorneys. "(T)he proceeding before this Court is not a criminal appeal in which the appropriateness of his sentence is up for consideration."
Corcoran’s attorneys want Indiana’s Supreme Court to reconsider his death sentence in light of his persistent mental illness, which they say has declined significantly since his sentencing.
"A national consensus has emerged against executing the severely mentally ill," wrote Corcoran's public defenders. "Every other contiguous death penalty state in this area of the Midwest has banned the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill."
Corcoran's attorneys raise another issue with the Indiana Supreme Court, and that is when and how the state acquired the drugs used in executions.
Both sides agree further briefing in the case is necessary.
