The Power to Harm: Mind, Murder and Drugs on Trial

Cornwell, John

ISBN 10: 0670867675 / ISBN 13: 9780670867677

Published by Viking, London, 1996

About this Item

First impression 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Dust jacket in protective sleeve, unclipped. Black cloth with bright silver lettering on spine. 321 pages clean and tight. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 107391

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Power to Harm: Mind, Murder and Drugs on Trial
• Publisher: Viking, London
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670867675
• ISBN 13: 9780670867677
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

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.