a man executed for four murders, a first since 2009 in Indiana

A man sentenced to death for a quadruple murder in 1997, including that of his brother, was executed Wednesday in Indiana. This is the first execution carried out by this American state since 2009. Joseph Corcoran, 49, who suffered from schizophrenia, was executed by injection and pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. (7:44 a.m. in France) at the Michigan City State Penitentiary. , authorities said. His last words were: “Not really. Let’s get this over with.”according to a release from the Indiana Department of Corrections.

He became the 24th person executed in the United States since the start of the year, all by lethal injection, except three by nitrogen inhalation in Alabama, a controversial method. Indiana has not executed a condemned person for 15 years, due to lack of being able to obtain the necessary products due to the reluctance of pharmaceutical laboratories, anxious not to be associated with the death penalty. But 13 federal executions took place there in 2020 and 2021, in the final months of the Trump presidency.

Joseph Corcoran was going through a period of stress in July 1997 because his sister’s upcoming wedding would force him to move out of the Fort Wayne home where he lived with his brother and sister, according to court documents. Hearing a conversation about him, he loaded his semi-automatic rifle and shot his brother, James Corcoran, his sister’s fiancé, Robert Scott Turner, and two of their friends, Timothy Bricker and Douglas Stillwell, according to the same sources. He was previously acquitted of murdering his parents, who were found shot to death in their home in 1992.

The appeals of his lawyers

In 2003, after the failure of his appeal against his death sentence in 1999, Joseph Corcoran waived a new appeal. His lawyers had tried in vain to demonstrate that their client was unfit to make such a decision. Psychiatric experts then testified that he was convinced he was “torture” by the guards of his prison by means of a “ultrasound machine”.

In June 2024, Indiana Governor and Attorney General Eric Holcomb and Todd Rokita announced their desire to resume executions, starting with that of Joseph Corcoran, through the acquisition of pentobarbital for lethal injections. Once his execution date was set, his lawyers again challenged the decision in November, arguing that he “continued to suffer from the debilitating symptoms of his paranoid schizophrenia”. But Joseph Corcoran himself, in a document written for the judicial authorities, dissociated himself from this approach, saying he was ready for his execution.

The Indiana Supreme Court and then a federal appeals court rejected his lawyers’ appeal in December. The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 American states. Six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.