Indiana executed Joseph Corcoran overnight on Wednesday, Dec. 18. His execution is the first to occur in the state in 15 years.
Corcoran was convicted for killing his brother and three others in 1997. In the years since, Corcoran has repeatedly admitted to the crime.
He shot each victim multiple times after hearing them allege he murdered his parents. Corcoran stood trial for their deaths, but a jury found him not guilty.
The 49-year-old’s execution came despite a plea from family and lawyers to grant him clemency. They cited what his lawyers described as “serious mental illness,” while the anti-execution nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center told The Washington Post that Corcoran had a long history of paranoid schizophrenia.
Had the death sentence been in neighboring Ohio or Kentucky, they said, a court would likely block the execution. Those states ban using the death penalty in cases of serious mental illness.
And while most state-sanctioned executions throughout history have occurred with some public visibility, Indiana is one of just two states that doesn’t allow members of the media to witness executions.
Despite this, Corcoran’s execution was different, as the warden approved his request to allow a reporter from the Indiana Capital Chronicle to be a witness as corrections officials administered a lethal drug via IV.
“He had some very brief head movement,” Casey Smith, the reporter who witnessed the execution, told the Associated Press. “You could see his eyes were open. He was blinking. We couldn’t hear him say anything. He did not seem from my vantage point to be in distress at that point.”
Smith also wrote that Corcoran was mostly still and silent. “After a brief movement of his left hand and fingers at about 12:37 a.m., Corcoran did not move again,” she wrote.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita issued a statement Wednesday morning, saying that Corcoran “finally paid his debt to society as justice was provided to his victims.”
