Two Evansville-area men on death row as Indiana considers executions
EVANSVILLE – After a 15-year hiatus, the state of Indiana plans to resume executions by lethal injection – but there is no information on when the sentences against the eight murderers sentenced to death, including two men from southern Indiana, could be carried out.
Erin Murphy, a spokeswoman for Gov. Eric Holcomb, would not tell the Courier & Press where the state will get the pentobarbital it plans to use to kill people, saying that is confidential information under state law. Asked whether authorities will work to set new execution dates for all those sentenced to death, she did not respond, instead taking umbrage at the press release announcing the original decision.
“Nothing more to add,” she said.
According to the press release, Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita are seeking “the resumption of executions in Indiana prisons.” Rokita officially filed a petition with the Indiana Supreme Court on June 26.
They will try to start with Joseph Corcoran, a Fort Wayne man who was convicted of killing four people, including his brother, in 1997. The conviction came five years after he was acquitted of shooting his parents.
According to Rokita’s motion, Corcoran has exhausted all state and federal appeals and “respectfully requests that this court set a date for Corcoran’s execution.”
Two men from the Evansville area on death row: Roy Lee Ward and Jeffrey A. Weisheit
The motion does not contain any statements about Roy Lee Ward or Jeffrey A. Weisheit.
Ward was sentenced to lethal injection in 2002 for the July 11, 2001, murder and rape of 15-year-old star student Stacy Payne of Dale, Indiana. She worked at Jenk’s Pizza, was a cheerleader and won awards for her public speaking, her obituary said.
After Ward appealed and was granted a second trial, a jury sentenced him to death again in 2007. The state Supreme Court then scheduled his execution for December 11, 2012, but the U.S. District Court initially granted a 90-day stay. A series of further stays and court cases have since delayed the execution date.
Weisheit was sentenced to death in 2013, three years after he set fire to a house in northern Vanderburgh County while his girlfriend’s children – 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and 5-year-old Caleb Lynch – were trapped inside.
According to their joint obituary, Alyssa was a second-grader at Cynthia Heights who devoured the Junie B. Jones books, while Caleb was in preschool and enjoyed helping his mother cook.
Due to the media attention surrounding the case, defense attorneys were able to get the trial moved to Clark County. On July 12, 2013, District Judge Daniel Moore sentenced him to death the following June.
That never happened, however, and the case wound through appeals for years. In November 2018, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence, and less than a year later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision.
A third Evansville-area man, John Stephenson, escaped death row in 2017 when the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his death sentence for the March 1996 murders of Jay Tyler Jr., Tyler’s wife Kathy, and Brandy Southard.
Southard, 21, worked at Allied Sporting Goods, while Jay and Kathy, both 29, had a daughter and enjoyed hunting and fishing together, their obituaries said.
During Stephenson’s trial in 1997, court officials fitted him with an electric shock belt designed to prevent “outbursts.” Although Stephenson’s shirt concealed the belt, the jury could see it bulging out from under his clothing. This, the court ruled, could have prejudiced them.
What is pentobarbital?
According to the National Library of Medicine, pentobarbital is a barbiturate used to treat epilepsy and insomnia. Veterinarians also use it to euthanize pets.
Holcomb’s press release does not explicitly state whether Indiana will use pentobarbital as part of a cocktail of poisons or as the sole lethal drug, as several other states do.
Indiana has struggled to stockpile lethal injection drugs as pharmaceutical companies increasingly sought to prevent their products from being used in state-ordered killings, so Holcomb urged state lawmakers in the 2017 budget proposal to include a provision shielding the identities of drug distributors from the public.
Two years later, former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr issued an amendment to federal executions that replaced the previously used three-drug mix with a single dose of pentobarbital. In the final six months of the Trump administration, the federal government used this order to carry out 13 executions at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute—the first executions of federal prisoners since 2003.
Now Rokita and Holcomb are trying to end a somewhat shorter pause at the state level. The last inmate in Indiana to die by lethal injection was former Evansville resident Matthew Eric Wrinkles.
On July 21, 1994, Wrinkles shot and killed his estranged wife, Debra Jean Wrinkles, her brother, Mark “Tony” Fulkerson, and Fulkerson’s wife, Natalie. He died more than 15 years later in Michigan City Prison from a lethal mixture of sodium pentothal, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride.
Tony Fulkerson, 28, was a graduate of Central High School who had purchased a Honda 750 motorcycle shortly before his death. Natalie, 26, who called herself “Chris,” worked as a secretary for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Debra was a 31-year-old mother of two who managed the Colonial Bakery on Covert Avenue. The day after the murders, a sign was on the door: “Closed due to death.”
Additional information from the Courier & Press archives.
How Taiwan is waging the disinformation war
Taylor Swift wants to sign Travis Kelce after the NFL star’s guest appearance on the Eras Tour
Sri Lanka’s head coach Chris Silverwood resigns
About The Author
