INDIANAPOLIS – Legal counsel for an Indiana man on death row has petitioned for the Allen County Superior Court to throw out a two-decade-old ruling that struck the option for post-conviction relief.
Joseph Corcoran, convicted of murdering four people in Fort Wayne in 1997, was sentenced to death in 1999.
It wasn’t until earlier this summer, in June, that Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed to schedule an execution date — after the state obtained pentobarbital, a lethal drug increasingly being used around the country to carry out death warrants. Corcoran’s execution, scheduled for Dec. 18, would be the first in Indiana since 2009.
In the Thursday filing, Corcoran’s Indiana public defender, Amy Karozos, maintained that her client “was and continues to be severely mentally ill.”
Karozos said that in the early 2000s when the time was still ripe for Corcoran to initiate a post-conviction review, he refused to sign the post-conviction petition.
Given recent, favorable exceptions made by state supreme court justices to allow tardy petitions — along with an increasing tendency nationwide to exempt those with mental illness from the death penalty — the lawyer argued for her client’s appeal window to be reopened.
“Corcoran has repeatedly refused to act in a competent manner which resulted in lost opportunities to save his life throughout this case and permit the State to assist in his suicide,” Karozos wrote in the motion, adding later that the state should have been forced to litigate a post-conviction case years ago “had Corcoran’s mental illness not severely interfered with his ability to sign his post-conviction petition in a timely manner.”
“Any prejudice the State of Indiana may suffer is outweighed by the ‘injustice’ suffered by Corcoran,” she continued.
Read the rest of the Casey Smith story for the Indiana Capital Chronicle, here.
