INDIANAPOLIS — Attorneys for quadruple murderer Joseph Corcoran filed a motion on Friday to ask the Indiana Supreme Court to block his execution, which is currently scheduled for Dec. 18.
One of Corcoran’s attorneys, Amy Karozos, wrote that her client has been plagued by symptoms of psychosis for his entire life. Karozos also indicated Corcoran has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Corcoran’s attorneys have presented a book he wrote under an alias as evidence of his mental illness. In the book, Corcoran wrote about electronic surveillance being conducted on prisoners via ultrasound machines. Corcoran’s legal team also indicated their client believes he has been tortured by prison guards who used ultrasound machines to inflict painful auditory hallucinations.
The book was titled “A Whistle-Blower Report: Electronic Harassment.” In the book, Corcoran also wrote that his goal is to show that his belief is not “a nut job conspiracy theory” but rather “basic electronics.”
You can read Corcoran’s full book here:
Karozos claims Corcoran is incompetent to be executed due to his mental illness, arguing it would be a violation of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Ford v. Wainwright — a case in which the court determined it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally ill.
Corcoran was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murders of his brother, James Corcoran; his sister’s fiancé, Robert Scott Turner; and two of their friends, Timothy Bricker and Douglas Stillwell.
The four victims were found shot to death in Corcoran’s Fort Wayne home in July 1997.
If Corcoran is executed, his death would mark the first time the State of Indiana has used capital punishment since 2009. The state put Matthew Eric Wrinkles — who was convicted of killing three people in 1994 — to death via lethal injection 15 years ago.
State officials have struggled to obtain drugs for executions in recent years. In June, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that the Indiana Department of Correction obtained pentobarbital, a drug that can be used for executions.
Corcoran’s attorneys claim that he has received psychotropic medications for decades, but nothing has cured him. His legal team contends Corcoran can not distinguish hallucinations from reality.
Corcoran’s attorneys have requested the stay to give them time to present their Ford claim. The Attorney General’s office has yet to respond to the motion.
FOX59 and CBS4 filed a Freedom of Information Act request to try to determine how much the State of Indiana spent to acquire the pentobarbital it needed to resume executions. When it fulfilled the request, the state did not disclose how much the drug costs, nor the manufacturer it purchased it from.
The state reported that it could not disclose such details because they could help the public identify what manufacturer the state bought the drug from. Indiana law prohibits state officials from revealing what companies they purchased drugs for executions from.
The motion Corcoran’s attorneys filed Friday also highlights the extra cost taxpayers may shoulder when the state pursues capital punishment. A report presented to the Indiana General Assembly in 2015 indicated the average cost of a death penalty trial in the Hoosier State was $385,458. The price tag for a death penalty trial is nearly 10 times higher than the cost of a trial in which the prosecution seeks a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
Unless his attorneys successfully stop his execution, Corcoran will be killed “before the hour of sunrise on Dec. 18.”
