Although the condemned inmate’s lawyers are attempting to stop the lethal injection due to his mental instability, the state of Indiana plans to carry out its first execution in 15 years before sunrise on Wednesday.
In court documents, attorneys for Joseph Corcoran, who was given a death sentence for the 1997 killings of four men—including his brother and his sister’s fiancé—have contended that because of his history of paranoid schizophrenia, executing him would be a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
They see that the 49-year-old suffers from auditory hallucinations and delusions, mistakenly thinking that he has been subjected to sound-wave torture by jail guards. They contend that despite the inmate’s own written comments expressing his desire for his execution to go forward, Corcoran lacks a logical understanding of his circumstances.
