INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana is one of 27 states where state-backed executions are still legal, but no one has been put to death in a Hoosier prison in 15 years. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita look to change that.
On Wednesday, Rokita’s office filed a motion with the Indiana Supreme Court seeking to set a date for the execution of Joseph Corcoran — a Fort Wayne man found guilty of murdering four people in 1997.
If put to death, Corcoran will be the first person to be executed by the state of Indiana since Matthew Eric Wrinkles was killed via lethal injection in 2009. There have been multiple federal executions that have occurred in Terre Haute, the latest being Daniel Lewis Lee in July 2020.
Why the pause in executions? While Indiana’s death penalty remains in effect and eight convicted murderers currently sit on death row, a lack of drugs has meant a lack of executions.
Drugs used in the lethal injection cocktail include methohexital, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. But the drugmakers behind those drugs don’t want their products used to kill prisoners.
Some states have even sought workarounds by passing “secrecy statutes” to prevent companies from learning if the drugs were being purchased for execution purposes.
But Holcomb said, after years of effort, the Indiana Department of Correction has acquired a drug — pentobarbital — which can be used to carry out an execution.
“I am fulfilling my duties as governor to follow the law and move forward appropriately in this matter,” Holcomb said.
Corcoran was found guilty by a jury in 1999 of shooting and killing his brother, James Corcoran; his sister’s fiance, Robert Scott Turner; and two of their friends, Timothy Bricker and Douglas Stillwell. Corcoran has exhausted all his appeals in 2016, according to Rokita, and has been sitting in death’s row awaiting execution since.
“In Indiana, state law authorizes the death penalty as a means of providing justice for victims of society’s most heinous crimes and holding perpetrators accountable,” Rokita said. “Further, it serves as an effective deterrent for certain potential offenders who might otherwise commit similar extreme crimes of violence.”
In his filing, Rokita called on the state’s high court to “immediately enable executions in our prison to resume” now that a lethal injection drug has been acquired. Corcoran is the first of Indiana’s death row convicts who could face the needle if the Indiana Supreme Court agrees to set an execution date and resume the death penalty.
