CNN
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The state of Indiana plans to carry out its first execution in 15 years before sunrise Wednesday, even as the condemned inmate’s lawyers are fighting to stop the lethal injection, citing his mental illness.

Lawyers for Joseph Corcoran – who was sentenced to death for the 1997 murders of four men, including his brother and his sister’s fiancé – have argued in court papers that his execution would violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution because he has long suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

It is said that the 49-year-old has auditory hallucinations and delusions and incorrectly assumes that prison guards tortured him with sound waves. Corcoran has no rational understanding of his situation, they argue, even though the inmate has indicated in his own written statements that he wants his execution to continue.

Neither the Indiana Supreme Court nor a U.S. District Court judge in northern Indiana have been persuaded by the lawyers’ arguments, and courts have so far refused to stop the execution. Corcoran was convicted of the murder of his brother, James Corcoran; his sister’s fiancé, Robert Scott Turner; and Timothy Bricker and Douglas Stillwell.

The planned execution comes about six months after Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that “after years of effort,” the state had obtained the drug pentobarbital, allowing the state to resume the death penalty for the first time since 2009.

A number of jurisdictions have relied on the sedative to carry out lethal injections in recent years as states struggle to obtain the drugs they previously used. Drug companies that oppose the death penalty have banned the use of their products in executions.

“Accordingly, I am fulfilling my duties as governor to follow the law and move forward appropriately on this matter,” Gov. Holcomb said in a statement this summer.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called the death penalty “a means to bring justice to victims of society’s most heinous crimes and to hold perpetrators accountable.”

“Now that the Indiana Department of Correction is ready to carry out the lawfully imposed sentence,” Rokita said, “it is incumbent on our judiciary to immediately resume executions in our prisons.”

Corcoran’s sister Kelly Ernst – who was also a sister of victim James Corcoran and was engaged to Turner – opposes her brother’s execution and the death penalty more broadly, telling the Associated Press that she believes Corcoran’s serious mental illness is “pretty obvious.” ” be.

“I just feel like there’s no such thing as closure,” Ernst, 56, told the AP. “I just don’t know what else to say. I haven’t slept in weeks.”

CNN has reached out to Ernst for comment.

Adam Bricker, the brother of victim Timothy Bricker, told CNN that the question of whether Corcoran will be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison is not very important to him. But he wants the matter to reach closure after so many years of off-and-on reporting on the case in the news, bringing his family’s pain to life again.

“It’s not fair to my mother and his living children. That’s not fair and it’s not cool,” said Adam Bricker.

“As a Christian, I don’t want anyone to die,” he added. “I didn’t want my brother to die either. But I think the laws have to be followed.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Indiana is one of only two states with a death penalty that does not allow news reporters to attend an execution. State law requires those in attendance to include correctional officers, the convict’s spiritual advisor, up to five friends or relatives of the inmate, and up to eight members of the victim or victims’ immediate families.

In other states, media witnesses generally act as neutral public observers, reporting details of an execution to the public. That can occasionally mean reporting reports of executions that violated a state’s protocol — an especially important responsibility when they contradict officials’ description of events.

At the time of the murders, Corcoran was stressed because his sister’s upcoming wedding would have forced him to move out of her home, according to a summary of the case included in the Indiana Supreme Court’s decision this month. Corcoran — who was charged but acquitted in the 1992 murders of his parents, according to the AP — woke up one afternoon and allegedly heard his brother and the other men talking about him, the summary says, and he shot them all four fatally with a rifle.

There was evidence of Corcoran’s mental illness that predated the killings, his lawyers said in an appeal in federal court this month, pointing to witnesses who recalled him talking to people who were not present or to Instances where he falsely insisted that others talk about him.

Corcoran’s lawyers claim he should never have stood trial. But his two attorneys at the time, unaware of the extent of his mental illness, wrote new affidavits and did not request a competency hearing.

When his attorneys attempted to file a post-conviction appeal, Corcoran initially refused to sign it, a decision that prevented review at the time. His lawyers argued in a 2003 hearing that Corcoran was incompetent and presented testimony from three mental health experts, each of whom diagnosed Corcoran with paranoid schizophrenia.

The court ultimately ruled that Corcoran had standing to waive his appeals, and although the inmate later changed his mind, it was too late. His application was rejected.

Corcoran’s disease has not improved over the past two decades and he has proven resistant to the Indiana Department of Corrections’ drug trials, his lawyers say.

Still, the state Supreme Court ruled this month that its lawyers had failed to show that anything had changed since the inmate was deemed competent. A federal judge similarly ruled that the claim that Corcoran was incapable of execution was without merit.

Both courts cited in part an affidavit recently filed with the state Supreme Court in which Corcoran wrote that he wanted to withdraw his appeals and claimed he understood the consequences of an execution. However, Corcoran’s lawyers argued that this affidavit was not credible, citing another psychiatrist who found that the inmate’s writings – although they seemed logical – were related to his delusions.

“It is unreasonable to allow mentally ill individuals to determine their own competency,” the attorneys wrote.