Execution date set for convicted murderer

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An Indiana death row inmate who murdered four people in Fort Wayne in 1997 will be executed Dec. 18, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday .

Joseph Corcoran , 49, would be the first Indiana death row inmate executed since 2009.

A jury in 1999 had found Corcoran guilty of the July 26, 1997, shooting deaths of four men.

The men included his brother, James Corcoran, 30; his sister’s fiancé, Robert Turner, 32; and two friends of James, Timothy Bricker, 30, 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, though, was unconvinced, and Corcoran went free.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita in June asked the Indiana Supreme Court to set an execution date for Corcoran , saying his appeals had been exhausted and that the state had obtained the necessary drugs to carry out a lethal injection. The lack of the drugs had delayed executions in Indiana for years.

In previous court filings, Corcoran’s attorneys have said that he has long been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which causes him to experience “persistent hallucinations and delusions.” In July, they appealed the state’s request for an execution date, stating that his serious mental illness should bar him from the death penalty. The attorney’s brief also noted that, in the past two decades, 11 states have banned capital punishment. It also claimed that no state surrounding Indiana allows the execution of a person with a serious mental illness.

Corcoran’s attorneys in July formally tried to block his execution . They called on the state’s highest court to use “modern, contemporary standards” when it considers potential execution of a defendant who is mentally ill.

Previous reporting from News 8’s Brady Gibson contributed to this report.