The US state of Indiana on Wednesday carried out its first execution in 15 years, putting to death a mentally ill man convicted of killing four people, including his brother, in 1997.
Joseph Corcoran, 49, was executed by lethal injection at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City at 12:44 a.m. (0644 GMT) and pronounced dead, officials said.
His last words were, “Not really. Let’s get this over with,” a statement from the Indiana Department of Corrections said.
Corcoran’s lawyers argued in court filings that sentencing him to death would violate the Constitution because he has long suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
He said Corcoran experienced hallucinations and delusions, falsely believing that prison guards were torturing him with an ultrasound machine.
Corcoran’s “long-standing and documented mental illness continues to plague him as much as it did at the time of the 1997 crime,” his legal team argued.
In July 1997, Corcoran was going through a stressful period because his sister’s upcoming wedding would require him to move out of the house he and his brother shared in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
According to court filings, when he heard his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran, talking about himself, he loaded his rifle and shot his brother and three other people.
Corcoran had previously been acquitted of the murders of his parents, who were shot to death in their home in 1992.
Corcoran’s execution is the 24th in the United States this year; Three used the controversial method of nitrogen gas, while the rest relied on lethal injection.
Indiana halted executions in 2009 because it was unable to obtain the necessary drugs, with pharmaceutical companies reluctant to become involved with the death penalty.
But Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita, both Republicans, announced this summer that the state had acquired the drug – pentobarbital – and that executions would resume, beginning with Corcoran.
His lawyers sought to block the execution through the courts, arguing that Corcoran “suffers from the debilitating symptoms of his paranoid schizophrenia.”
However Corcoran sent a letter to the Indiana Supreme Court last month saying he no longer wanted to litigate his case.
Yet his lawyers filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to stay the execution, which was ultimately rejected.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – have retained them.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
