Indiana’s governor and attorney general have asked to set an execution date for Fort Wayne’s Joseph Corcoran, who was convicted in a 1997 quadruple homicide. (Courthouse photo from Allen County and mugshot from public record. Photo illustration by Casey Smith/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
Attorneys for convicted murderer Joseph Corcoran on Friday filed for a stay of execution, arguing it’s cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who is seriously mentally ill.
“Mr. Corcoran’s paranoid schizophrenia completely removes him from reality. He cannot distinguish between reality and his delusions and hallucinations — his delusions are his reality,” the filing said.
“The evolving standards of decency prohibit Mr. Corcoran’s execution and require reversal of his death sentence.”
Corcoran was convicted of murdering four people in Fort Wayne in 1997 and was sentenced to death in 1999.
It wasn’t until earlier this summer, in June, that Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed to schedule an execution date. That was after the state obtained pentobarbital , a lethal drug increasingly being used around the country to carry out death warrants. Corcoran’s execution — scheduled for Dec. 18 — would be the first in Indiana since 2009.