Indiana Supreme Court sets date for first state execution in 15 years

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Indiana Supreme Court has set the date for the first state execution in 15 years.

The court ordered Wednesday that Joseph Corcoran be executed before sunrise on Dec. 18, WXIN-TV reported.

Indiana’s last state execution was in 2009, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, when Matthew Wrinkles was executed for the murdering his wife, her brother and sister-in-law.

The yearslong pause has been attributed to the unavailability of drugs used in lethal injections. Gov. Eric Holcomb said in June that the state Department of Correction had acquired the sedative pentobarbital, a drug multiple states use in lethal injections, and asked the Supreme Court to set a date for Corcoran's execution.

Corcoran, 49, was convicted in July 1997 killings of his brother, James Corcoran; 30-year-old Douglas A. Stillwell; 32-year-old Robert Scott Turner; and 30-year-old Timothy Bricker.

Corcoran has been on death row since 1999. He exhausted his appeals in 2016. He had argued that the execution would be unconstitutional because he suffers from a mental illness and that the state had failed to disclose its execution protocol.

The first federal execution in 17 years at the time was carried out at a federal prison in Indiana in 2020.

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This story has been corrected to say that the execution of Joseph Corcoran would be the first state execution in 15 years.