- The US state of Indiana has carried out its first execution in 15 years, putting to death a mentally ill man convicted of murdering four people in 1997.
- Joseph Corcoran, 49, was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 12:44 am at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
- Corcoran’s lawyers argued that executing him would violate the Constitution due to his long-standing mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia.
The US state of Indiana has carried out its first execution in 15 years, putting to death Joseph Corcoran, a mentally ill man convicted of murdering four people in 1997. Corcoran, 49, was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 12:44 am at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Corcoran’s lawyers argued in court filings that executing him would violate the Constitution due to his long-standing mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia. They stated that Corcoran experienced hallucinations and delusions, falsely believing that prison guards were torturing him with an ultrasound machine.
Corcoran was convicted of murdering four people, including his own brother, in 1997. He had previously been acquitted of the murders of his parents, who were found shot dead in their home in 1992.
The execution is the 24th in the United States this year, with three using the controversial method of nitrogen gas and the rest relying on lethal injections. Indiana had paused executions in 2009 due to difficulties in obtaining the necessary drugs, but Governor Eric Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita announced this summer that the state had acquired the drug pentobarbital and that executions would resume.
