Holcomb, Rokita Call for Execution of Fort Wayne Murderer

Source: Peter Dazeley / Getty

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana’s governor and attorney general announced Wednesday that they want to resume executions of prisoners, starting with the murderer of four people in 1997 in Fort Wayne.

Indiana’s last execution was Matthew Wrinkles in 2009, via lethal injection. Wrinkles was sentenced in 1995 for the shooting deaths of his estranged wife, her brother and his wife in July 1994 in Evansville.

Indiana’s lawmakers in 1995 approved lethal injection for executions but didn’t specify a drug to use. However, a shortage of sodium thiopental led to the halt in executions, and Indiana had difficulty finding a new drug.

The state announced in 2014 that it planned to switch to Brevital, an alternative sedative some other states had adopted as a lethal injection drug, as part of a three-drug cocktail.

That effort hit roadblocks, though, as pharmaceutical companies would not sell drugs to the Department of Correction, the Death Penalty Information Center reports .

Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a statement Thursday, “The Indiana Department of Correction has acquired a drug — pentobarbital – which can be used to carry out executions. Accordingly, I am fulfilling my duties as governor to follow the law and move forward appropriately in this matter.”

Pentobarbital is a barbiturate which, in low doses, can be used in medical settings as anesthetic, the National Library of Medicine says.

Indiana Deputy Attorney General Tyler Banks on Wednesday filed a motion with the Indiana Supreme Court to set an execution date for a man sentenced to death on Aug. 26, 1999, in Allen County.

Joseph Corcoran , of Fort Wayne, was found guilty in the shooting deaths on July 26, 1997, of four men.

The men included his brother, James Corcoran, his sister’s fiancé, Robert Turner, Timothy Bricker, and Doug Stillwell. Joseph Corcoran used a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle in the shooting inside the home he lived in with his sister, Murderpedia reports.

The website also says that Joseph Corcoran at age 17 was accused of shooting his parents because they were too strict. A jury was unconvinced, and Corcoran went free.

According to a document from the Indiana Department of Correction website , Indiana executed 92 men from 1897 to 2009.

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