Two months ago, I commented on the death penalty case of Derrick Dearman who was executed in Alabama after waiving his remaining legal appeals. I discussed various reasons why no one should be allowed to do what Dearman did.
But on December 18, the state of Indiana plans to repeat the mistake when it executes Joseph Corcoran. If Corcoran is indeed put to death next week, it will only be because he informed the state supreme court in October that he wanted to drop all of his appeals so that he could be executed.
He is what people opposed to the death penalty call a “volunteer.” The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) defines a volunteer “as a prisoner who takes affirmative steps to hasten their execution, including waiving appeals, asking for an execution date, or instructing their attorneys not to file end-stage litigation.”
What Dearman did in October is no better today. Volunteering for your own execution contradicts long-recognized tenets of so-called natural law and justice, recognized in the American Declaration of Independence. Courts should never allow it.
This is true even for people like Corcoran, who is certainly no Boy Scout.
He was sentenced to death for the 1997 killings of four people, including his brother and sister’s fiancé. If his execution goes forward, Corcoran will be the first execution in Indiana in fifteen years. The last person it put to death was Matthew Wrinkles in 2009.
One night in July 1997, Corcoran was at home with his brother, two of his brother’s friends, and his sister’s fiancé. He thought he overheard them talking trash about him and confronted them about it.
During an ensuing argument, he shot and killed all of them.
At his trial, his defense lawyers told the jury, to no avail, that he suffered from extreme mental and emotional disturbance and could not appreciate the gravity and criminality of what he had done.
On appeal, his lawyers explained that “For virtually his entire life, Mr. Corcoran has been plagued by symptoms of psychosis and cognitive dysfunction. These symptoms continue to this day, and numerous mental health experts have diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia or precursors to the schizophrenic diagnosis.”
When Corcoran pulled the plug on any further efforts to stop the state from putting him to death, he told the Indiana State Supreme Court, “I am guilty of the crime I was convicted of, and accept the findings of all the appellate courts…. I understand,“ Corcoran said, “that if this Court [grants my request], the death warrant will be carried out. I will then be put to death for the heinous crime I committed. I understand that the execution will end my life.”
As is the case for many execution volunteers, Corcoran’s lawyers are opposed to his request on the grounds that he is not competent to make that decision. “He does not understand,” they continued, “why he is about to be executed, and there is no deterrence or retribution served. His execution would serve no purpose other than to inflict unconstitutionally inhumane cruel and unusual punishment.”
They argue that their client “wants to be executed and is in fact eager for his execution…[only] because he believes execution will relieve him from the pain of…[an] ultrasound machine and a sleep disorder.”
Thery asked the Indiana Supreme Court to stay his execution. However, Corcoran filed a handwritten affidavit saying that his lawyers seek “to delay any and all executions through endless litigation.”
He explained, “The long, drawn-out appeal history has addressed all the issues I wished to appeal… I do not wish to proceed with more and/or endless litigation. Thus, I urge this Court to not accept my counsel’s motion and petition to litigate further.”
Last Thursday, the court sided with Corcoran. However, his lawyers intend to continue to contest his competency in the federal courts.
The Corcoran case is not unique. Many death row inmates want to get on with the business of being executed.
According to the DPIC, Corcoran would be the third volunteer in 2024, and volunteers have played a big part in America’s death penalty story. As the DPIC says, “In many states, the history of the death penalty is a history of volunteers: in four states — Connecticut, New Mexico, Oregon, and Pennsylvania — the only prisoners executed have been volunteers, and volunteers were the first to be executed in 15 states and by the federal government when it resumed executions in the modern era.”
All told, since 1977, 165 (9%) of this country’s 1567 executions have involved a volunteer, including Gary Gilmore, the first person put to death in that period. So what is wrong with allowing someone who has been sentenced to death to volunteer to be executed?
Often, as in the Corcoran case, there are real questions about whether they are competent to make that decision. But, an earlier DPIC report explained, “the legal bar for ‘competence’ to waive capital appeals is extremely low.”
That is why, it said, “scores of people have been executed on their own request despite evidence of severe mental illness and other serious constitutional concerns about their convictions and death sentences.” And, as I have written elsewhere, “Nobody on death row can freely assess the options and give meaningful consent to waive meritorious legal appeals.”
In my view, the problem people like Corcoran pose for courts is less about assessing whether they are competent than recognizing that the government “has an independent interest and duty to ensure that executions occur only in cases where there are no outstanding factual or legal issues.”
But there are even more compelling reasons not to allow death row inmates to volunteer to be executed, reasons that go to the heart of who we are as a people. To put it simply, there is something indecent when the state acquiesces in the wish of someone in its custody to become an instrument of their own demise.
The great political theorist Thomas Hobbes made this clear a long time ago. In 1681, he wrote, that the “law of nature” which he described as a “general rule, found out by reason” forbids anyone “to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and to omit that by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.”
While Hobbes did not oppose the death penalty per se, the philosopher David Heyd explains that Hobbes viewed it as “a limiting case of a political order based on the consent of individuals….” Hobbes, Heyd explains, was very clear that no one rightly can abandon their natural right to self-preservation and “willingly subject…[themselves] to acts of violence” even though “the consent of all other citizens” demands their death.
Hobbes’ position is reflected in the language of the Declaration of Independence. Certain rights, it states, are “inalienable,” including the right to life. While Thomas Jefferson himself did not categorically oppose capital punishment, what he wrote suggests that rights inalienable rights can neither be taken away nor given up, even if voluntarily.
That commitment is incompatible with the use of capital punishment in any case and with allowing Corcoran, or anyone else, to volunteer to be executed. Any court that permits such a thing is doing something un-American.
