June 29
USA:
Crime Subcommittee Hearing Thursday on Death Penalty Legislation: Does it
Deter Crime and Save Lives?
News Advisory:
Crime Subcommittee Hearing Thursday on Death Penalty Legislation
WHAT:
Hearing: Does an Accurate and Swift Death Penalty Deter Crimes and Save
Lives? A Legislative Hearing on H.R. 3060, the "Terrorist Death Penalty
Enhancement Act of 2005," and H.R. 3035, the "Streamlined Procedures Act
of 2005"
WHO:
Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security - Rep. Howard
Coble (R-N.C.), Chairman
WHEN: 1 p.m., Thursday, June 30
WHERE: 2141 Rayburn Building
---
NOTE:
This hearing will be immediately followed by Subcommittee Markup of H.R.
1751, the "Secure Access to Justice and Court Protection Act of 2005."
BACKGROUND:
The death penalty's deterrent effect on crime and ability to protect
innocent lives continues to be debated. One journalist reviewing available
data has pointed out, "(a)lmost the entire drop in murder rates over the
past decade has occurred in States with capital punishment, with the
biggest decrease seen in States that are executing people." Despite
opponents' claims, data suggests that our appellate and habeas system for
review has been effective in identifying and ultimately rectifying errors
at the trial and appellate levels - errors which encompass a variety of
reasons other than claims of actual innocence.
These Bills Will...
-- Allow the death penalty for any terrorist who in the course of
committing a terrorist offense engages in conduct that results in the
death of a person.
-- Reform and streamline death penalty procedures to ensure that those
found guilty do not abuse the criminal justice system.
WITNESSES:
Mr. Barry M. Sabin, chief of Counterterrorism Section for the Criminal
Division, U.S. Department of Justice; The Honorable Joshua K. Marquis,
district attorney, Clatsop County, OR; Mr. Ron Eisenberg, deputy district
attorney, Philadelphia, PA; and Mr. Bernard E. Harcourt, professor of
Law/Faculty Director of Academic Affairs, University of Chicago.
(source: US Newswire)
*****************************************
Bringing Human Rights Home
On March 1 the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Constitution forbids
executing juvenile offenders. In putting to death people who were minors
when they committed their crime, the majority noted, "The United States
now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile
death penalty." In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia
attacked the majority's consideration of laws and practices outside the
United States, saying that the consensus of "like-minded foreigners" had
no bearing in understanding our own Constitution. One month later, in a
speech to the American Society of International Law, Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg responded that US courts should pay more attention, not less, to
international norms. She added that "the notion that it is improper to
look beyond the borders of the United States in grappling with hard
questions has a certain kinship to the view that the US Constitution is a
document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification."
The increasingly noisy debate on the High Court over the proper role of
international standards of justice in our domestic law and policy reflects
a broader development that is gaining momentum around the country: Human
rights are coming home. Advocates are discovering how the fight for
justice and freedom here can be waged through human rights, the
international ethical and legal standards that the United States helped to
create more than 55 years ago and that it is officially committed to
respect and uphold. In so doing, this emerging human rights movement is
forced to confront deliberate, longstanding and nonpartisan policies aimed
at insuring that human rights are reserved for external use only.
Unlike many governments, the United States never underestimated the power
of human rights. Led by Eleanor Roosevelt, this country played a critical
role in the adoption, on December 10, 1948, of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights (UDHR), which for the first time bound all governments to
a common standard of conduct. Ever since then the United States has
invoked human rights standards, often aggressively if highly selectively,
to criticize other governments.
Yet from the very beginning, leaders from both political parties sought to
insure that the human rights the United States championed abroad could
never be employed as instruments of change at home. One concern was the
possibility that the Declaration's recognition of economic and social
rights--the right to a job, education, adequate food, shelter and
healthcare--could be used to expose the large holes in the US social
safety net. The driving fear, however, was the threat that human rights
standards posed to the system of US racial apartheid. Even the treaty
against genocide, adopted at about the same time as the Declaration, was
blocked successfully by Southern politicians because of its potential use
in the fight against lynching in the United States. As Professor Carol
Anderson documents in her book Eyes Off the Prize, one of Eleanor
Roosevelt's less celebrated roles was to work against any enforcement
powers for UN human rights bodies and thus assure Southern Democrats that
racial segregation had nothing to fear from human rights.
Under a deal made by the Eisenhower Administration, the United States
would for forty years refuse to ratify a single one of the human rights
treaties it had helped to inspire. When some treaties, such as the
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, were finally ratified in the 1990s
it was with the explicit condition that, absent specific legislation,
these treaties could not be enforced in domestic courts. This policy of
"US exceptionalism" effectively deterred civil rights and social justice
organizations from taking advantage of the language, laws, methodologies,
mechanisms, possible alliances and unifying vision offered by the
international human rights framework and movement. American-based human
rights organizations put most of their focus on every country except the
United States, thus reinforcing the view that human rights were of
relevance only to other countries.
In recent years, however, social justice activists, public interest
attorneys and even federal judges have begun to discover human rights--and
to bring them home. One promising development is the recent creation of
the US Human Rights Network, a membership group that already includes more
than 150 mostly community-based organizations. The network is dedicated to
promoting US accountability to universal human rights standards,
connecting domestic social justice movements with international movements
for human rights, and building a "human rights culture" in America
("Something Inside So Strong," the network's resource guide, is available
at www.ushrnetwork.org).
In San Francisco, WILD for Human Rights has been pioneering in its use of
a human rights framework. WILD (Women's Institute for Leadership
Development) led a highly creative campaign that convinced the City
Council in 1998 to adopt the international Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as part of its
municipal law and to conduct a "gender analysis" of city operations to
determine their impact on women. The campaign included organizing a public
hearing in which residents who had experienced discrimination and
community leaders testified about the practical impact that adopting CEDAW
would have. The ordinance that emerged required the city not only to
refrain from discriminating itself but also to "take all appropriate
measures" to prevent discrimination by others--including gender-based
violence--within the city. An analysis of the Department of Public Works,
for example, led to new, nontraditional employment opportunities for women
and more streetlights in unsafe neighborhoods. And in El Paso, Texas, the
Border Network for Human Rights, which works to curb abuses against
immigrants, has had similar success with a human rights approach. Within a
year of adopting such a strategy, the network had established ten local
Committees for the Defense of Human Rights, with more than 250 families as
members.
These activists join groups, like the Indian Law Resource Center and the
Center for Constitutional Rights, that have long used human rights
principles in the legal context. And they mirror a change in the way that
international human rights organizations based in the United States think
about their own country's obligations. Global Rights, for example, is a
twenty-five-year-old human rights group with offices around the world. Its
work now includes the United States, with a focus on protecting the rights
of migrant farm and domestic workers, addressing racial disparities in
criminal justice and promoting the right to equal education. Human Rights
Watch, too, has turned its attention to the domestic context, exposing
violations of workers' rights in meatpacking and other industries.
Also spurring the nation's tentative steps toward embracing human rights
is the work of scholars in the legal academy. At the University of Chicago
Law School, Cass Sunstein is forcefully making the case that the notion of
economic human rights is a part of our nation's political, legal and
cultural legacy. His recent book The Second Bill of Rights details how
much of the international human rights system flowed from the US
experience of the Great Depression, as well as from core American values
of freedom and human dignity. Just as legal scholars like Charles Hamilton
Houston laid the theoretical groundwork for the rebirth of the equal
protection clause in Brown v. Board of Education a half-century ago, so
Sunstein and others are developing and testing the bases for human rights
to assume their proper role in US law.
This legal movement is beginning to bear fruit--notably through some
recent Supreme Court decisions. Over the past two decades the Rehnquist
Court has rolled back a range of constitutional and civil rights
protections. Yet in several landmark cases during its last two terms, the
Court has vindicated fundamental freedoms, based partly on international
human rights principles.
In Lawrence v. Texas, in which it protected consensual gay sexuality as
within Americans' right to privacy, the Court cited a European Court of
Human Rights decision as persuasive authority. In its decision upholding
affirmative action as a tool for advancing diversity and addressing
discrimination, Justice Ginsburg cited the convention against racial
discrimination in her concurring opinion. In holding that executing people
with mental retardation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the
Court looked, in part, to international practices and standards of
decency. And in its recent decision overturning the juvenile death
penalty, the Court found relevant that every country save the United
States and Somalia had ratified the international Convention on the Rights
of the Child, which outlaws the practice.
These legal references have not gone unnoticed by critics of US human
rights. House Republicans have introduced a resolution declaring that the
"meaning of the Constitution of the United States should not be based on
judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such
foreign judgments, laws or pronouncements inform an understanding of the
original meaning of the Constitution of the United States." A similar
resolution has been introduced in the Senate.
What difference would it make if we in the United States began to take
human rights seriously? Certainly, constitutional rights are central to
our democracy. But reinvigorating a human rights culture alongside our
constitutional one would advance American values of opportunity, fairness
and dignity that have languished in recent years.
Think of what it would mean to the 45 million Americans without health
insurance if the United States respected the right to "the highest
attainable standard of physical and mental health" contained in the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In South
Africa, since a landmark Constitutional Court ruling, the right to health
has meant that low-income, HIV-positive women who are pregnant have had
access to antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission of the virus to
their newborn babies. We can only imagine what the trajectory of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic might have been in the United States if we had made
human rights principles central to our early response.
And consider our nation's criminal justice policies. In 2002, for the
first time in our history, the nation's prison and jail population
exceeded 2 million people--almost two-thirds of whom are people of color.
Yet when the Supreme Court heard a 1987 case asserting that race played a
determinative role in who receives the death penalty in Georgia, it
assumed the accuracy of that claim, then went on to rule that this form of
unequal protection did not violate the Constitution. In contrast, the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination--which
President Johnson signed in 1966 and the Senate ratified in 1994--requires
governments to eliminate and redress "any distinction, exclusion,
restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or
ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing
the recognition, enjoyment or exercise on an equal footing of human rights
and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, or
any other field of public life." There is no question that Georgia's
racially biased use of the death penalty violated that standard, which
focuses on government's obligation to remedy injustice rather than a
defendant's obligation to prove individual discriminatory intent.
Just as social justice at home suffers in the absence of respect for human
rights, the cost of US exceptionalism to our credibility abroad is
immeasurable. It is especially great at a time when our government is
pursuing the hearts and minds of the world's nations to combat global
terrorism. Moreover, legitimate US criticism of countries like China and
North Korea for human rights violations is unlikely to get a fair hearing
when the United States has renounced its own treaty obligations to respect
the rights of Guantnamo Bay prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention.
Until it was recently rebuked by the Supreme Court, the Bush
Administration asserted the right to imprison US citizens indefinitely as
"enemy combatants" without charging them with a crime and without
affording them access to impartial review or an attorney; it still claims
the authority to subject foreign nationals to such treatment. The United
States has properly called for international action to address the human
rights catastrophe in the Darfur region of Sudan. Yet it tried to "unsign"
the International Criminal Court treaty, which was designed to address
precisely that kind of gross human rights violation.
To be sure, human rights are no magic bullet. Many countries have signed
and ratified all the major human rights instruments, then routinely
ignored them. Bringing human rights home to the United States would spur
debate, disagreement and dissent. But whatever the leanings of the leaders
in power at any given time, Americans have a tradition of respect for the
rule of law. Government officials would oppose rights enforcement when
inconvenient or embarrassing, and judges would disagree about the
fundamental meaning of various human rights--just as they do with
constitutional rights. But ultimately, they would be our law and could be
enforced in ways that would change lives at home and be an inspiration
abroad.
There is no question that international human rights remain a foreign
concept today in many--perhaps most--communities around the United States.
Yet they are no more foreign than the right to vote was in Mississippi
before courageous civil rights activists and ordinary people began
standing up to hatred and violence in an organized way. They are no more
foreign than the right to a safe and legal abortion was in Texas when
reproductive rights activists began laying the groundwork for Roe v. Wade.
They are no more foreign than the right to organize for decent working
conditions was in the auto plants of Detroit or the mines of West Virginia
before workers took up that cause in mass numbers. That the right to vote,
the right to organize and the right to reproductive freedom are under
attack right now emphasizes the challenge facing all those who care about
social justice, as well as the new energy and direction that human rights
can bring to those struggles.
(source: Alan Jenkins & Larry Cox, The Nation)
VIRGINIA:
Virginia Bishops Advocate for Death Row Inmate
Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde and Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo
recently collaborated on a letter sent to Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner
asking to commute the sentence of Robin Lovitt to life in prison.
"Circumstances like these heighten a risk that is surely one to avoid at
all costs that is, the risk of executing someone when doubts about his
conviction linger," wrote Virginias two Catholic bishops about Lovitt, who
is scheduled for execution July 11.
According to Jeff Caruso, executive director of the Virginia Catholic
Conference, Lovitt was convicted of murdering a man in a pool hall with a
pair of scissors. One of the problems with his case, though, is that DNA
evidence was destroyed by state officials.
"Reports have indicated that physical evidence which may have been
improperly tested was later destroyed, thus eliminating the opportunity
for post-conviction retesting to prevent error," the letter said.
But it is not just because there is question surrounding Lovitts
conviction that the bishops wrote their letter.
"The death penalty would be unnecessary, and hence inappropriate, even if
we could be absolutely certain of Mr. Lovitts guilt," the bishops said,
adding that todays society can be protected without the use of capital
punishment.
Virginia has a life without parole sentence available, and the bishops
argue that this should be used instead of the death penalty.
"We should not make use of the ultimate punishment," Caruso said. It would
be much better to spare someones life.
"It is important for the bishops to underscore the belief that the death
penalty is not necessary in our state," he said. "We look to promoting a
culture of life. Part of that is opposing the death penalty in our place
and time."
Caruso explained that there are different ways of promoting the culture of
life. The Churchs teaching against abortion, embryonic stem-cell research
and euthanasia is absolute. When it comes to the death penalty, however,
the Church teaches that it may be appropriate if it is the only way to
keep society safe. Bishops Loverde and DiLorenzo argue that in the U.S.
today, it is not needed.
"The life-sentence alternative, we believe, is unique in its ability to
securely protect state residents and at the same time uphold the dignity
belonging to every person, even to one convicted of a brutal crime," the
letter states. "Ultimately, we ask you to reject the extreme and
unnecessary measure of taking his life to show that taking life is wrong."
The bishops acknowledged the fact that the victims family has suffered
greatly from Lovitts crime. They pledged their continued support of such
families.
"We ardently desire healing that cannot come from more loss of life," the
letter said.
Our Lady of La Salette Sister Connie Parcasio, coordinator of prison
ministry for Catholic Charities, compared the bishops letter to a father
defending a son from death.
"They courageously stepped forward," she said of the bishops. "No one else
is more empowered to do this. No one else can more appropriately undertake
this action than you upon whom God entrusted the care of His people in
Virginia."
Sister Connie hopes the bishops will continue to defend the defenseless,
especially the unborn and those on death row. She encouraged all Catholics
to pray for victims of crime and their families, learn about Catholic
social teaching, educate people about it and advocate in favor of it by
contacting elected officials.
"With (the bishops), I believe that it is unnecessary for the state to
take away Mr. Lovitts life and deprive him forever the possibility to
amend his life," Sister Connie said. She then pointed to Christ as the
ultimate example on how to act.
"He came to give us life not kill us because we sinned," she said.
The bishops arent the only ones advocating for clemency for Lovitt. The
confusion surrounding the lost DNA samples has many groups concerned.
Investigators are looking into police procedures in handling DNA evidence.
There is also a plea for the governor to stay the 23 death sentences in
Virginia until DNA retesting can occur, said Caruso.
"There is the potential that someone wrongly convicted will be executed,"
he continued. "This brings the fairness of the death penalty in Virginia
into question."
Gov. Warner has never granted clemency to a convict before.
"We only hope hell consider our case a strong one," Caruso said.
Caruso suggested that any interested parties should contact Gov. Warner to
request that he commute Lovitts sentence to life in prison. To contact the
governor, write to Gov. Mark R. Warner, Executive Office Building, 3rd
Floor, 1111 East Broad St., Richmond, Va. 23219 or call 804/786-2211. To
send an e-mail, go to www.governor.virginia.gov and click on "Contacting
the Governor."
(source: Arlington Catholic Herald)
KENTUCKY:
By the numbers
444 % - Increase in Kentucky's inmate population in 1970-2000.
19,465 - Population in Kentucky prisons.
350 - Beds in Boone County's new jail.
6.9 million - People on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at the
end of 2003.
3.2 % - The above figure as a % of U.S. adult residents.
1,296,986 - People in state prisons at the end of 2003.
173,059 - People in federal prisons at the end of 2003.
762,672 - People in local jails at mid-year 2003 (awaiting trials or
serving sentences).
59 - Prisoners executed in the United States in 2004.
3,374 - Prisoners on death row in the United States in 2003.
20 % - Of inmates in state prisons across the nation in 2001 being held on
drug charges.
15 - State prisons for adults in Kentucky.
27 % - Recidivism rate of Kentucky state prisoners.
$322,707,255 - Kentucky Department of Corrections, fiscal year 2004
budget.
$47.38 - Average daily cost to house adult prisoner in Kentucky prisons.
(source: Cincinnati Post)
****************************
The rush to incarcerate----'Tough on crime' laws overwhelm system
In an exhaustive study of sentencing and prison crowding in Kentucky, a
University of Kentucky law professor has concluded that the rush to
incarcerate has threatened the state's finances, put thousands of people
behind bars with little thought to the overall cost to society and done
little to actually keep people safer from crime.
The study is by Robert Lawson, who helped craft the state's penal code in
the 1970s and is the author of the standard handbook on evidence use in
criminal trials.
The study has prompted Chief Justice Joseph Lambert to ponder the topic.
"The numbers alone suggest the need to look at where we are," Lambert said
in a recent interview.
According to Lawson's study, Kentucky's corrections budget was about $7
million in 1970 when the state had just over 2,800 inmates. By 2002, the
budget was 45 times larger, more than $300 million, with about five times
more inmates.
Perhaps even more revealing, Lawson pointed out that Kentucky's population
rose by 25 % from 1970 to 2000, while the inmate population increased by
444 %.
"The thirst for incarceration of citizens has reached levels far beyond
anything ever experienced in this country's history and seems to exist
unchecked in almost every corner of the nation," Lawson said.
The prison population growth has exceeded even the experts' expectations.
In January, state budget officials reported that the prison population was
expected to be 17,424 this fiscal year. Last week, the Corrections
Department reported the population was 19,465.
The numbers are now expected to grow to 20,798 in the fiscal year that
begins July 1 and to 21,889 the following year.
Lawson said the reasons for the boom represent a pressure to imprison that
has continued unabated for three decades. Kentucky, he maintains, has the
toughest "three strikes" law in the nation, a persistent felony offender
law that can mean a guaranteed 10 years behind bars for three convictions
for theft.
The PFO law, as it is called, "renders the seriousness of an offender's
conduct irrelevant to his sentence and permits (and sometimes even
requires) punishment that is morally indefensible, that debases all
notions of common sense, and that works to warehouse for extended periods
offenders who are not likely to inflict serious harm on the public,"
Lawson wrote.
The chief of Kentucky's public defender system described the effect in
more basic terms.
"We shouldn't be paying $17,000 a year to house somebody who stole $400
worth of stuff," said Ernie Lewis.
While Lawson argues for a more reasoned approach toward sentencing and its
effects, Attorney General Greg Stumbo has hewed to the more traditional
line.
Stumbo, who convened his own sentencing commission earlier and is also a
member of Lambert's panel, said the corrections budget is actually a
smaller percentage of the overall state budget than previously. With a few
alternate suggestions, Stumbo maintains the hard-line prosecutorial
approach to locking up the convicted and, if not throwing it away, at
least misplacing the key for many years.
Stumbo would endorse an increase in the felony threshold from the current
$300 to $500. The threshold is significant because it is the cut-off for
theft cases between misdemeanor and the vastly more serious felony
charges.
"That one's a no-brainer," agreed Lewis, the defense counsel.
Lawson argues that even the notion behind incarceration has changed
somewhat and there is less emphasis on rehabilitation in favor of simple
warehousing. But that, too, carries its own risks.
"The prison population, it is to be remembered, consists of moral deviants
and not model citizens, and is far more capable of providing instruction
on the commission of crime than on the worth and qualities of good
citizenship," Lawson said. "It is more likely to enhance than to diminish
the mental, emotional, and social deterioration of inmates, and even under
the best of circumstances offers no more than an even chance of correcting
the situation and conditions that led to incarceration in the first
place."
Sooner or later, Lawson argues, the General Assembly is going to have to
deal with larger issues in corrections, beyond simply spending more money
to put more inmates behind bars.
"With the politics of crime still tilting strongly toward tougher laws and
tougher attitudes toward criminals, it will not be easy for lawmakers to
embrace the reforms that are needed to slow the flow of inmates that has
flooded the prison system and put the state's corrections budget at risk
of bankruptcy," Lawson said.
(source: Associated Press)
INDIANA:
On death row----Indiana to execute mentally ill man
On July 26, 1997, Joseph Edward Corcoran murdered his brother James, his
sisters fianc Robert Turner and two friends Timothy Bricker and Doug
Stillwell. He is scheduled to be executed for those crimes on July 21,
2005.
Corcoran was upstairs in his sisters home while his brother and Turner sat
in the living room with their friends. He claims he heard them talking
about him, so he went downstairs and confronted them. Then he placed his
7-year-old niece in an upstairs bedroom to protect her from the gunfire,
loaded his rifle and before they had a chance to escape, he shot and
killed the 4 men. Corcoran then laid down the rifle, went to a neighbors
house and asked them to call the police.
In Indiana, the prosecution is not required to seek the death penalty in
every case. The determination whether to seek the death penalty against a
particular defendant on a particular murder charge is left to the
discretion of the prosecuting attorney for each Indiana county. Similarly,
not every case in which the death penalty is sought proceeds to trial. As
with other cases, prosecuting attorneys are given discretion to enter into
plea negotiations, offering the defendant a sentence less than death in
exchange for a guilty plea.
Initially, prosecutors offered Joe Corcoran a deal of life in prison in
exchange for a guilty plea. Corcoran said he would take the plea deal, but
only if he could have his vocal chords cut. For more than a decade, he has
believed that he talks in his sleep and his enemies use this to get
information out of him. Prosecutors, of course, rejected his request to
have his vocal chords severed. The case proceeded to trial where the jury
found him guilty and recommended the death penalty, which the judge in the
case upheld.
In 1994, the Indiana General Assembly made mentally retarded individuals
ineligible for death or life without parole. But the state does not extend
its consideration of mental impairment to defendants suffering from mental
illness. Corcoran would not be on death row if he were suffering from
mental retardation instead of mental illness. The law regards the mentally
retarded as not responsible for their actions in committing a murder, but
the standards for the mentally ill are much stricter and some believe much
more erroneous.
At his initial trial, defense attorneys argued that Joe Corcoran was
mentally incompetent to stand trial, stating that he suffered from
schizotypal personality disorder and schizophrenia as confirmed by medical
professionals. But the court ignored those diagnoses.
Indiana has no uniform standard for evaluating whether or not defendants
are in fact mentally ill and whether or not their mental illness makes
them competent to stand trial. Primarily, the question of whether or not a
person knows their actions were wrong in committing the crimes of which
they are accused is the minimal requirement. If they are able to admit
that yes, they are aware of their wrongdoing, they are usually found
competent to stand trial. But its not always this easy.
Corcoran has been incarcerated for nearly eight years. Since his
imprisonment, he has repeatedly been diagnosed as schizophrenic, paranoid
and delusional by doctors who routinely evaluate patients for both state
prosecutors and the Department of Corrections. He is currently on the
antipsychotic medication Geodon and Trazadone, an antidepressant.
According to prison medical records, the medications are having a variable
effect, though he remains paranoid and delusional in spite of the
medication.
In addition to believing his enemies are able to interrogate him in sleep
and requesting his vocal chords be severed, Corcoran also believes that
prison guards have installed a type of ultrasound machine in his cell and
project high frequency sound waves, causing him to twitch uncontrollably
and cause him extreme pain. He also believes that the guards have found a
way to project his thoughts on the radio for others to hear, and he hears
high frequency voices in return.
After receiving the death penalty for his crimes, Corcoran waived all his
rights to an appeal over the objection of his attorneys. According to
court records, Corcoran has stated that he wants the death penalty because
he knows he did something wrong, and also because he believes it is the
only way to stop the (imaginary) pain inflicted upon him by the prison
guards, as well as the voices he hears.
But state defense attorneys have pursued the appeals process on his behalf
and have introduced the testimony of several psychologists confirming the
medical findings of prison doctors that Corcoran is suffering from real
and debilitating mental illness.
I believe that he is delusional, testified Dr. Robert Kaplan. He is
suffering from a severe mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, that is
causing him to believe things about his situation that has affected his
ability to make appropriate decisions regarding his defense and how to
proceed.
This diagnosis was shared by Dr. George Parker of the IU Medical School
and deputy medical director for the Indiana Division of Mental Health, who
has treated schizophrenic patients in state hospitals for more than a
decade.
Parker also testified that he believes Corcoran suffered from
schizophrenia and delusions at the time he committed the murders. The
evidence stretches pretty far back. But there was no clear definitive
diagnosis made until after the arrest. But the evidence of paranoid
beliefs, of auditory hallucinations, those at least pre-date the offense.
At Corcorans sentencing hearing, Judge Frances Gull chastised that it was
shameful to characterize his illness as a mental illness to the disrespect
of all people in this country that are in fact mentally ill.
Despite this previous statement, Gull recently admitted she too now
believes the diagnosis. However, she also believes that while he might be
mental ill, he is competent to waive his appeals and ask for the death
penalty.
The [defenses] concession is that Mr. Corcoran suffers from mental
illness. That has never been the issue, folks, whether or not Mr. Corcoran
suffers from mental illness, Gull stated in a 2003 appeals hearing. The
issue is whether or not he is competent to waive post-conviction review of
his convictions and of the death sentence The dialogue that I had with Mr.
Corcoran, as well as the state deputy attorney general had with him,
clearly indicates that Mr. Corcoran understands the proceedings and he
satisfied the competency requirements of Indiana Code.
Having lost the appeals process in trial court and post-conviction
hearings, the case of Joe Corcoran is now being considered in Federal
Habeas District Court. It is here that the final decision will be made as
to whether a mentally ill man who commits murder should be put to death as
penalty for those crimes.
(source: NUVO.net)
