The Power to Harm: Mind, Medicine, and Murder on Trial - Hardcover

Cornwell, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670867675 ISBN 13: 9780670867677

Publisher: Viking, 1996

Synopsis

On September 14, 1989, forty-seven-year-old Joseph Wesbecker entered the Standard Gravure printing plant in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. A half hour later, he had killed or wounded twenty people, then turned the gun on himself. "Spree killings, " especially in stressed work-places, make the news every day; in the Louisville case, though, an unusual court proceeding provides that rare chance to go beyond the headlines to try to unravel the story not just of one man's actions, but also of America's approach to mental health and community responsibility. Working from extraordinary case documents, interviews, and his own coverage of events in Louisville, an award-winning writer extracts Wesbecker's tragic story, embedded in the crises of blue-collar life in takeover America, as well as the larger story of the debate over human nature itself.

About this title

Synopsis

On 14th September 1989, Joe Wesbecker entered the Standard Gravure printing plant in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Half-an-hour later, he had shot 20 of his former co-workers - Wesbecker had been on mental disability leave from the plant for a year - before turning the gun on himself. It emerged that Wesbecker had been on Prozac, so his victims and their families sued its makers, Eli Lily and Company, for compensation. In the course of preparing their cases, lawyers created the most detailed profile of a murderer ever assembled. The jury rejected the plaintiffs' claims, but it soon came to light that Lily's lawyers had made a secret deal that led to their landmark court victory. Using case documents, interviews and his own coverage of the trial, the author recreates the tragic events - a story embedded in the crises of blue-collar life in takeover America. He also offers a new perspective on the genesis of violence, on the tears in America's societal safety net that only pharmacology now seems to fill, and on the struggle, in labs and law courts over the definition of identity itself.

About the Author

John Cornwell is senior research fellow at Cambridge University, where he directs the Science and Human Dimension Project.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0670867675
• ISBN 13: 9780670867677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336