INDIANAPOLIS — The Indiana Supreme Court has denied a request to pause the state’s first execution in 15 years, which is scheduled for Dec. 18.
A full written opinion on the reasons for the denial are expected at a later date.
Attorneys for Joseph Corcoran filed two stay of execution requests on Nov. 15, requesting the court consider whether the execution would violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
The state responded to the stay requests on Nov. 26, and the justices took the request under consideration.
In a 5-0 decision in September, the Indiana Supreme Court set the morning of Dec. 18 as the final morning Corcoran would wake up. He is set to die by lethal injection at sunrise that morning at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
Corcoran was convicted by a jury in 1999 for shooting and killing his brother James Corcoran, his sister’s fiancé Robert Scott Turner, and two of their friends: Timothy Bricker and Douglas Stillwell.
Corcoran lost his last appeal in the case in 2016 and has stayed on death row.
Indiana has been without an execution since Matthew Wrinkles on Dec. 11, 2009. The pause has been largely in-part due to the absence of drugs to carry out the executions—a drug which Rokita and Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb said in June that the state now has in supply.
Another Indiana death row inmate, Benjamin Ritchie, is the next in the waiting line.
Ritchie has sat on death row since 2002 after being convicted of shooting and killing Beech Grove Police Officer William Toney in September 2000.
The Indiana Supreme Court has not yet set a date for Ritchie’s execution. Ritchie’s attorneys had until Dec. 1 to file a final rebuttal to Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. The court will now deliberate their decision.
Including Corcoran and Ritchie, there are currently 10 inmates on death row in Indiana, according to a database from the Death Penalty Information Center.
Indiana is one of 21 states where the death penalty is legal, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In the U.S., 23 people have been executed in 2024 so far. Last year, there were 24 total executions.
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