Indiana prepares to put to death a killer of 4 after 15-year pause in executions
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana officials are preparing to execute the state’s first death row inmate in 15 years, who was convicted a quarter-century ago of killing his brother and three other men.Joseph Corcoran, 49, has been on Indiana’s death row since 1999.If he is put to death as scheduled Wednesday, it will be the state’s first execution since 2009.
In that time, 13 executions were carried out in Indiana but those were initiated and performed by federal officials in 2020 and 2021 at a federal prison.Corcoran is scheduled to be executed before sunrise Wednesday at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Chicago.Indiana’s resumption of executions is refocusing attention on Corcoran’s case and questions about how the state has been able to obtain a drug for lethal injections.Corcoran was 22 on July 26, 1997, when he fatally shot his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran, and three other men: Douglas A.Stillwell, 30, Timothy G.
Bricker, 30, and Robert Scott Turner, 32.According to court records, Joseph Corcoran was under stress because the forthcoming marriage of his sister to Turner would necessitate moving out of the Fort Wayne, Indiana, home he had shared with his brother and sister.He awoke to hear his brother and others downstairs talking about him, loaded his rifle and then shot all four men, records show.While jailed, Corcoran reportedly bragged about shooting his parents in 1992 in northern Indiana’s Steuben County.He was charged in their killings but acquitted.Corcoran’s sister, Kelly Ernst, who lost a brother and her fiancé in the 1997 shootings, declined to discuss whether she believes her younger brother killed their parents.But Ernst, who lives in northeastern Indiana, said she believes the death penalty should be abolished and her brother’s execution won’t solve or change anything.
She does not plan to attend his execution.Ernst said she had been out of contact with her brother for 10 years...