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Attorneys for Indiana death row inmate Joseph Corcoran appealed the state’s request for an execution date on Thursday, maintaining that he is “unquestionably seriously mentally ill” and therefore should not be subject to the death penalty.
Corcoran, who was convicted of murdering four people in Fort Wayne in 1997, filed his response with the Indiana Supreme Court two weeks after Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita announced that the state’s Department of Correction (DOC) has obtained the drug necessary to carry out the death penalty.
State and federal public defenders said in their challenge that Corcoran has long been diagnosed as mentally ill and continues to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia that causes him to experience “persistent hallucinations and delusions.”
As such, they said the state supreme court should deny the motion to set an execution date and hear oral arguments on whether executing Corcoran — who they describe as “unquestionably seriously mentally ill” — would be permitted under the Indiana and United States constitutions.
“An unspeakable tragedy took the lives of four people who unquestionably deserved to live,” Corcoran’s lawyers said in Thursday’s filing. “This tragedy, however, has a nexus to a serious mental illness that persists through.”
There is still no execution date set for Corcoran. It’s now up to the state’s high court justices how to proceed.
Does mental illness preclude Corcoran?
Corcoran’s public defenders specifically pointed to the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which restricts capital punishment to offenders who commit “a narrow category of the most serious crimes and whose extreme culpability makes them the most deserving of execution.”
They noted, too, that individuals with severe mental illness, “particularly those whose mental illness results in psychosis, like Corcoran,” have many of the same features as juveniles and those with intellectual disabilities — whom the United States Supreme Court rendered the death penalty as “disproportionate punishment.”
Corcoran’s public defenders said he “has consistently been diagnosed with a severe mental illness. They recalled that multiple experts testified in Corcoran’s trial that his mental illness “prevents him from making rational decisions.” They additionally argued that Corcoran’s “overwhelming desire to escape his psychiatric symptoms” likely led him to waive his earlier opportunities for appeals.
“Corcoran would have avoided the death penalty altogether were it not for his mental illness which affected the decision-making process during Corcoran’s legal proceedings,” his attorneys told Indiana’s Supreme Court justices.
Corcoran’s lawyers also made the case that his symptoms of schizophrenic hallucinations and delusions existed even before the murders. They further referenced previous expert testimony from Dr. Phillip Coons, who said Corcoran’s “ultimate refusal to accept either a plea bargain or a bench trial without the death penalty was a product of his mental illness.”
“Moreover, a national consensus has emerged against executing the severely mentally ill,” Corcoran’s attorneys continued. “Every other contiguous death penalty state in this area of the Midwest has banned the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill.”
Many other states have also introduced bills to ban the death penalty or execution for people with severe mental illness, including schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, the attorneys added.
“There is a regional consensus clearly established in this area of the Midwest as well as an emerging national consensus to ban the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill,” they said in Corcoran’s filing with the state supreme court.
An Ohio statute that took effect in early 2021, for example, prohibits the death penalty for defendants who have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, and whose mental illness “significantly impaired the person’s capacity to exercise rational judgment in relation to the person’s conduct.”
The Ohio legislature specified that an offender’s condition does not need to meet “the standard to be found not guilty by reason of insanity … or the standard to be found incompetent to stand trial.”
Kentucky followed in early 2022 with a law exempting offenders with “active symptoms and a documented history, including a diagnosis” from the death penalty. Corcoran’s counsel emphasized that one of the listed mental illnesses in Kentucky is schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.
Corcoran’s lawyers said Indiana also “recognized this consensus” in the case against Elijah Dorsey, who earlier this year was convicted in the killing of an Indianapolis police officer. Although Marion County prosecutors had sought the death penalty, they ultimately dismissed it after Dorsey was deemed mentally ill and ineligible for the death penalty.
Ongoing questions about execution drug
Corcoran’s legal counsel also called into question the execution drug, pentobarbital, recently acquired by the state but largely shrouded in secrecy by Hoosier officials.
When asked last month by the Indiana Capital Chronicle where DOC acquired the drug and how much the state paid, Holcomb said he “can’t go into those details, by law.”
Lawmakers made information about the source of the drugs confidential on the last day of the 2017 legislative session.
The Capital Chronicle has filed an official records request seeking the cost of the drugs.
Advocates have additionally said it’s critical for the public to know who will be administering the drug — and how — as well as what training those individuals will receive.
“The State moved for a date after, at some point, most likely recently, acquiring drugs from some unknown source. While a secrecy statute is in place, the date should not be set until the State delivers the new protocol and affirms no state or federal laws were broken in obtaining the drugs. A secrecy statute cannot condone the illegal acquisition of controlled substances,” Corcran’s attorneys said. “There has been no disclosure regarding the amount of the drug in their possession, whether they are expired, or their potency and sterility. The State should provide the Court and Corcoran this information. This can and should be done in a manner that complies with the secrecy statute prior to this Court permitting the execution to proceed.”
The one-drug method is a departure from the state’s protocol used since 1995, involving a series of three chemicals.
Although no state-level executions in Indiana have used pentobarbital before, 13 federal executions carried out at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute have been carried out with the drug. Fourteen states have used pentobarbital in executions, too.
After Indiana’s last execution in 2009, the state was effectively forced to pause. Increased scrutiny of lethal injection drugs led pharmaceutical companies to refuse to sell their products for use in executions. Holcomb said that made acquiring the necessary drugs “harder to get.”
There are currently eight men on Indiana’s death row, including Corcoran. No one has been added to the state’s death row since 2014.
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