When her son was taken from her by gun violence at the age of 28, Crystal Walker was the first to feel the anger. She said she wished the person responsible would die.
But after a few weeks, Walker, who is now a chaplain at the Indiana Women’s Prison, realized this would mean another parent would have to go through what she went through. And that felt wrong, she said.
“Even if that person is a mass murderer and kills other people, we have no right to find out when, where and how someone else dies,” she said Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Indiana Statehouse, where dozens of people gathered. protests Governor Eric Holcomb’s decision to resume state executions in Indiana after a fifteen-year hiatus.
“That’s God’s business,” Walker said.
Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita announced in June that they were seeking to resume executions in Indiana state prisons, starting with Joseph Corcoran, who was convicted in 1997 of killing four people in Allen County. The Indiana Supreme Court scheduled Corcoran’s execution for December 18. .
President-elect Donald Trump had also indicated during his campaign that he would not only resume federal executions but also expand who is eligible.
Crystal Walker, chaplain at the Indiana Women’s Prison, speaks at an anti-death penalty rally on the steps of the Indiana Statehouse on Sunday, November 17, urging Governor Eric Holcomb not to resume state executions.
The Indiana Abolition Coalition and Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty organized the meeting to urge Holcomb to stop Corcoran’s execution and end the death penalty in Indiana, arguing that it is undignified, morally wrong and, in an appeal to Hoosiers’ practicality, is costly to taxpayers.
Bill Breeden, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington and longtime anti-death penalty activist, called on Holcomb to go to the death chamber and witness Corcoran’s execution if he will not stop it.
“There is no other premeditated murder like this in the world,” he said. “No.”
More: There are eight murderers on Indiana’s ‘Death Row’, no executions are planned
In their announcement, Holcomb said the Department of Corrections had recently purchased a lethal injection drug called pentobarbital “after years of effort.”
Speaking to reporters days after the announcement, Holcomb would not release details about the source or cost of the drug — information that state lawmakers have made confidential under state law. Holcomb said he believes executions are “appropriate in these rare cases of heinous crimes,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported.
“When such evil is shown, I personally believe in it,” he said.
Rokita, who successfully ran for re-election this fall, said in the news release that the death penalty is a “means to provide justice to the victims of society’s most heinous crimes and to hold perpetrators accountable.”
In September, Rokita filed another motion seeking an execution date, this time for Benjamin Ritchie, a man convicted in the 2000 shooting of Beech Grove police officer William Toney.
Matthew Wrinkles, an Evansville man convicted in 1994 of murdering his wife and two of her relatives, was the last person executed in Indiana in 2009.
Joseph Corcoran’s case had many twists and turns
In 1997, 22-year-old Joseph Corcoran lived with his brother, James Corcoran, his sister, Kelly Nieto, and her fiancé, Robert Turner.
According to Corcoran, he was upstairs on July 26 and heard his brother and Turner talking about him with some friends – Timothy Bricker and Doug Stillwell – in the living room. He put his seven-year-old niece in an upstairs bedroom, grabbed his semiautomatic rifle and fatally shot the four men downstairs. He then went to a neighbor’s house and asked them to call the police.
A jury convicted Corcoran of four murders in 1999, and the court sentenced him to death.
Joseph E. Corcoran was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murders of four people in Allen County.
Corcoran’s mental health is a recurring issue in his case. Before his trial in Allen County, his defense initially filed a notice that they would argue an insanity defense. But after doctors evaluated him under court orders, the defense withdrew the notice and the court deemed him competent to stand trial.
The Indiana Supreme Court initially dismissed Corcoran’s death penalty sentence due to concerns about the trial court’s process, but later upheld the sentence after the court reinstated it. When Corcoran initially declined to sign a petition for post-conviction relief in 2003, his defense requested a new psychological evaluation to determine whether Corcoran was competent to make this decision. Although the experts found that Corcoran suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, the court found that Corcoran was nevertheless entitled to waive his damages because he demonstrated that he clearly understood the status of his case and the consequences of his decision.
In 2005, Corcoran changed his mind and tried to apply for post-conviction relief, but it was too late. That year, he also filed a petition for habeas corpus in the federal district court for the Northern District of Indiana, alleging that the state violated his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial during pretrial negotiations. The district court granted the request, but a federal appeals court reversed it.
Corcoran exhausted his appeal in 2016. He is one of eight people on Indiana’s death row.
Corcoran’s legal team makes mental health arguments
In a statement read by Indiana Abolition Coalition President David Frank on the steps of the State House on Sunday, Corcoran’s legal team argued that this death penalty sentence would not have been handed down without Corcoran’s mental illness.
Corcoran’s refusal to accept one of the prosecutor’s plea deals — a guilty plea in exchange for life without parole or a trial without the death penalty — was a “product” of his mental illness, they wrote. They described intense delusions and hallucinations he said he experienced as a result of his paranoid schizophrenia, and said friends and neighbors noticed “strange behavior” long before his trial, including seeing him talking to himself and nodding his head.
Archbishop Charles C. Thompson of the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis delivers an opening prayer at an anti-death penalty rally on the steps of the Indiana Statehouse on Sunday, Nov. 17, urging Gov. Eric Holcomb not to resume state executions.
“He does not view his execution as a punishment, but as a means to escape his continued suffering,” the statement said. “This is a product of his irrationality, not an indication of his competence.”
Two states bordering Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, ban the death penalty for those who had a serious mental health condition at the time of their crime.
Protesters receive a message from another death row inmate
Rejon Taylor, an inmate on federal death row in Terre Haute, had a message for Sunday’s protesters that Laura Lasuertmer, his secretary of state, read.
Taylor wondered if Corcoran, like him, goes back and forth between wanting to live in bleak circumstances or hastening his own death to end it all. He wondered if Corcoran also reflected on the “absurdity of people protesting his impending death a little too late,” when the help he needed most was in his childhood.
“If we as a society fail to embrace our children, including the marginalized and underprivileged, as they grow older they will burn society down to feel its warmth,” Taylor wrote. “And your protests at state capitols, or wherever you hold them, will continue in vain, while the core issue remains unaddressed.”
Sylvester Edwards, president of the Terre Haute NAACP, rings a bell in honor of those executed by state and federal governments. Outside the Indiana Statehouse on Sunday, November 17, protesters urged Governor Eric Holcomb not to resume state executions.
After the meeting, participants lined up to ring a large bell originally created in 1992 for the Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty, which rang the bell every time a state execution took place. In September of this year, the state of Delaware repealed the death penalty, freeing up the bubble to travel to other states.
On Sunday, the bell’s toll echoed again and again across the lawn of the Indiana Statehouse.
Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @kayla_dwyer17.
This article originally appeared on the Indianapolis Star: Protesters call on Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb to halt state executions
