After a 15-year pause in executions, Indiana prepares to put to death a man who killed 4

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana officials are preparing to execute the state’s first death row inmate in 15 years, convicted a quarter-century ago of killing his brother and three other men.

Joseph Corcoran, 49, has been on Indiana’s death row since 1999. If he is put to death as scheduled on Wednesday, it will be the state’s first execution since 2009. At that time 13 executions were conducted in Indiana, but these were initiated and carried out by federal officials in a federal prison in 2020 and 2021.

Corcoran will be executed before dawn Wednesday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Chicago.

The resumption of executions in Indiana is once again focusing attention on Corcoran’s case and questions about how the state was able to obtain a drug for lethal injections.

Corcoran was 22 on July 26, 1997, when he fatally shot his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran, and three other men: Douglas A. Stillwell, 30, Timothy G. Bricker, 30, and Robert Scott Turner, 32.

According to court records, Joseph Corcoran was under pressure because his sister’s impending marriage to Turner would necessitate a move from the Fort Wayne, Indiana, home he had shared with his brother and sister.

He woke up and heard his brother and others talking about him downstairs, loaded his gun and then shot all four men, records show.

While in prison, Corcoran reportedly bragged about shooting his parents in 1992 in Steuben County, northern Indiana. He was charged with the murder, but was acquitted.

Corcoran’s sister, Kelly Ernst, who lost a brother and her fiancé in the 1997 shootings, declined to discuss whether she believes her younger brother killed their parents.

But Ernst, who lives in northeastern Indiana, says she believes the death penalty should be abolished and that her brother’s execution will not solve or change anything. She has no intention of attending his execution.

Ernst said she had not had contact with her brother for 10 years until recently. She believes it is “fairly clear” he has a serious mental illness.

“I just feel like there’s no such thing as closure,” Ernst, 56, said Friday. “I just don’t know what else to say. I haven’t slept in weeks.”

Indiana last executed Matthew Wrinkles, who was put to death in 2009 for killing his wife, her brother and sister-in-law in 1994.

State officials said they could not proceed with the executions because a combination of drugs used in lethal injections was no longer available. There has been a national shortage for years because pharmaceutical companies – especially in Europe, where opposition to the death penalty is strongest – have refused to sell their products for that purpose.

That has prompted states to turn to compounding pharmacies, which manufacture medications specifically for a client. Some states have turned to more accessible medications, such as the sedatives pentobarbital or midazolam, both of which critics say can cause excruciating pain.

Indiana follows suit and plans to use pentobarbital to execute Corcoran.

The federal government also used it pentobarbital in the 13 federal executions carried out during the last six months of then-President Donald Trump’s first term.

Many states, including Indiana, refuse to disclose where they source the drugs. When asked how the state obtained the pentobarbital it plans to use in Corcoran’s execution, the Indiana Department of Correction referred The Associated Press to a state law that designates the source of lethal injection drugs as confidential.

In June, Gov. Eric Holcomb made the announcement the state had acquired pentobarbital and asked the Indiana Supreme Court to set a date for Corcoran’s execution. The Supreme Court set his execution date of December 18 in September.

State law determines the specific timing and process. It also limits the people who have a role in an execution, protects their identities and specifies who can witness executions at Indiana State Prison.

At the time of an execution, Indiana code states that the only people allowed to be present are the prison guard, those selected to assist in the execution, the prison doctor, an additional doctor, the convict’s spiritual advisor and the prison chaplain.

Up to five friends or relatives of the person being executed and up to eight relatives of the crime victims are allowed to watch the trial.

The Indiana Department of Correction did not respond to multiple questions from the AP asking whether any of the staffers who will help carry out Corcoran’s execution have previously participated in a state execution.

Indiana, along with Wyoming, is one of only two states that ban members of the news media from witnessing state executions, a recent study found. report from the Death Penalty Information Center.

That report states that “unhindered media access to executions is critical because the media perceives what the public cannot. States generally prohibit citizens from attending executions, so the media becomes the public’s watchdog and provides important information about how the government follows the law and uses taxpayer dollars.”

Corcoran had federal appeals have been exhausted in 2016.

But on Wednesday, his lawyers filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana, asking the court to halt his execution and hold a hearing to decide whether it would be unconstitutional because Corcoran has a serious mental illness.

They claim he has “severe and long-standing paranoid schizophrenia” and that his condition “manifests as auditory hallucinations and delusions that prison guards are torturing him with an ultrasound machine.”

“Indeed, he has volunteered to be executed, and wishes to be executed, because he believes that his execution will provide him with relief from the perceived pain that his delusions and hallucinations are causing him,” the filing said.

Corcoran’s attorneys asked the Indiana Supreme Court to halt his execution were refused on December 5. The high court also rejected petitions from his lawyers to argue whether he is competent to be executed.

In a handwritten statement to the judges, Corcoran said he no longer wanted to litigate his case.

“I am guilty of the crime for which I was convicted and accept the findings of all courts of appeal,” he wrote.