I just got a voice mail from Kathy Bayes of the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, who had just received an e-mail from someone in the state public defender's office, to the effect that: Judge Allen Sharp of the Northern Indiana District Court has reversed the death penalty of Joseph Corcoran, charged with killing his brother, his sister's fiance and two of his brother's friends in Fort Wayne in 1997. Apparently, he ruled that the plea agreement offered to Corcoran, in which the death penalty would be taken off the table if he would waive a jury trial, amounted to depriving him of his constitutional right to an attorney. The judge has sent the case back to Fort Wayne for something less than the death penalty to be arrived at.
Check your real news outlets for further details, and to see how accurate my quick dispersal of third-hand information was.
