"If Corcoran was not mentally ill, the crimes never would have happened"
--Larry Komp, An Attorney for Corcoran
Days ago Indiana officials executed the state's first death row inmate in 15 years. Convicted 25 years ago of killing his brother and three other men, he heard them talking about him having to move out of his childhood home after his sister's wedding. He loaded a rifle, walked down stairs and shot them.
During the trial doctors testified that 22-year-old Corcoran suffered from schizophrenia–which attacks sufferers in their 20s and 30s. Schizophrenics experience a combination of hallucinations, delusions, and extremely disordered thinking and behavior. Just the idea of having to find somewhere to live, frightened and angered him. Bang. That's all it took. He then walked to the neighbor's house, asked them to call 911, went back home, and sat down on the front porch to wait for officers to arrive.
"They made me mad," he told police. "I shot them all.." Does this sound like a person with a sound mind?
Corcoran's final appeal to stop the execution was denied on December 5th and the execution went forward on December 18th as planned. Soon after midnight, he had his last meal, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital.
Corcoran was a killer of four people for sure, but perhaps six. Five years earlier, when his parents were found dead through the use of a 12-gauge shotgun, he stood trial, but was acquitted, later bragging that he had killed them. Over the 25 years since shooting four men in his home, his case had been reviewed repeatedly but never overturned, and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said Corcoran "finally paid his debt to society as justice was provided to his victims.”
He's right. There is a price to pay for crime. But why wasn't young Joseph Corcoran helped before four men were killed? Certainly after his parents were murdered. The family knew Joseph had serious issues, and teachers and friends no doubt had a good idea he needed help. Instead, nothing is done until a crime is committed. We have turned our penal institutions into homes for those with mental health issues because as a culture and a society, we are...what? Embarrassed? Too shy? Too uncomfortable, to signal when someone needs serious help? Then we are shocked when a violent and delusional sick person commits murder.
Our prisons are not equipped to handle the number of cases that reside within their walls. They try, but statistically, when 40% of those in prison have some kind of mental issue, most go untreated. We need expanded mental health care in Indiana, better methods to identify people who need help, and broader control of dangerously ill people in our state. If Joseph Corcoran had experienced meaningful psychiatric intervention, those four men, and likely Joseph's parents would be alive today.
He would be too,
Jim
