It is now up to the Indiana Supreme Court as to whether convicted murderer Joseph Corcoran will be executed later this month.
Both Corcoran’s attorneys and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita have filed briefs on either side of that question, arguing whether Corcoran’s mental health is such that he should not be put to death.
Sentenced to death in 1999 for a quadruple murder, Corcoran’s case traveled through state and federal appeals courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, on multiple occasions, and the death sentence was upheld nearly a decade ago, but no execution date was ever set.
At issue largely 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.
In June, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita asked the state to set an execution date for the now 49-year-old man.
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 argued that the matter of Corcoran’s mental illness has been settled and wants a date set to execute him with little delay.
Corcoran’s attorneys requested the stay of execution in November, arguing that his paranoid schizophrenia rendered him incompetent.
The state of Indiana, however, argues that Corcoran’s mental illness does not spare him execution, writing that “at this time the law presumes Corcoran to be sane and competent to be executed.”
But right off the bat, in the state’s response to Corcoran’s attorneys request for a stay of execution, they argue the motion should be denied because he has not yet signed any of the documents in request for post-conviction relief.
“Not only is Corcoran’s signature required as a legal matter, but it is not even clear that Corcoran himself wants further post-conviction review,” wrote Tyler Banks, the supervising deputy attorney general for Indiana.
The state said that Corcoran’s attorneys’ signatures on his behalf don’t cut it under the state’s trial rules, and those motions should be denied without any condition of the merits of his behalf.
Corcoran’s attorneys, including State Public Defender Amy Karazos and federal public defender Laurence Komp, argued that if the Indiana Supreme Court were to accept the attorney general’s argument about the signatures, then it would strip attorneys of their role as their client’s representative.
They argue that in many other cases, Indiana courts have accepted arguments for post-conviction relief signed not by the defendants themselves, but by their attorneys.
Corcoran’s mental illness itself may prevent him from signing the paperwork attesting to that very mental illness, putting him in a kind of “Catch 22” by continuing to require his signature.
His attorneys argued that the murders themselves were a product of auditory hallucinations, in that he believed they were talking about him.
Evolving standards of decency now move away from executing the mentally ill, Corcoran’s attorneys argue.
“Corcoran has paranoid schizophrenia,” wrote Corcoran’s attorneys. “People with schizophrenia have many of the same deficits which lessen the moral culpability of young people and people with intellectual disability.
“They have great difficulty communicating with and understanding others, engaging in logical cost-benefit analysis, and evaluating the consequences of and controlling their behavior.”
In their brief, Corcoran’s defense attorneys attached documentation from his original trial attorneys, attesting that they did not uncover Corcoran’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia in time to be of use for competency determination during trial. He tried to hide evidence of the severity of his mental illness, according to court documents.
Corcoran’s refusal at the time to accept a plea agreement sparing his life was a product of his mental illness at the time, according to doctors cited in court documents.
However, the state of Indiana says that Corcoran’s arguments should not be considered because they had not been raised in earlier proceedings challenging his death sentence.
Furthermore, the state argues, Corcoran’s mental illness doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be put to death.
“His legal challenge to the constitutionality of his sentence based on his alleged mental health status was known and available in his prior post-conviction litigation, and he has failed to prove that either the state or federal constitution forbids the execution of someone merely alleging mental illness of some nebulously defined severity,” wrote attorneys for the state in court documents.
The defense has failed to prove that Corcoran’s mental state has rendered him incapable of understanding the relationship between the murder of four people and his death sentence, the state argued in its response.
Nor, argued the state, does the presence of a severe mental illness necessarily render a defendant incompetent.
Corcoran is scheduled to die before sunrise on Dec. 18. His name does not appear on the December clemency calendar.