In September 1943, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, prominent citizen and attorney John Noxon Jr. was arrested for the murder of his 6-month-old Down Syndrome baby Lawrence. Baby Lawrence, according to Noxon, was accidentally electrocuted. However some believed it was a mercy killing.

The Electrocution of Baby Lawrence by James E. Overmyer takes the reader inside the case and the courtroom.

Without a doubt this book is well researched and I really wanted to like it, however it lacked that 'can’t put it down' feel and it ended up on my DNF pile. I have been trying to read it for the last three weeks, and every time I pick it up, I read a few pages and then lose interest.

This book mainly focuses on the trial and courtroom drama. I am just not a fan of reading a true crime book that fairly much sums up the whole trial as the main chunk of the book. I rather read the court transcripts instead. It just isn’t the style of a true crime book that I like.

This was an interesting book, based on a real incident that took place in 1940 about the possible murder of a 9 month old baby who had, what is considered Down Syndrome now, but was considered Mongolian idiocy due to the appearance of the individual affected. Baby Lawrence Noxon was 9 months old and lived with his mother and father, both from wealthy families and living in a large house just outside of town. Lawrence was diagnosed with down syndrome and soon after the birth the doctors advised the couple to put the child in a sanatorium to live out his days (he was not expected to live very long), however the couple decided to take him home and think on what to do. John Noxon, the father, a lawyer, was looking after his son and stepped into the garage to get some tools to repair a faulty radio, when he came back, the baby was wrapped up in the cord of a lamp and did not appear to be breathing. He contacted help and the baby was found to have died. The doctor that examined the baby decided to ask the police to investigate further. At the time corruption was rampant, and the police did everything they could to prove that John actually killed his baby as a 'mercy killing' to save him from growing up with down syndrome. There was a lot of detail about the history of almost every character in this story, some of the individuals were either very prominent or became so. This was an enlightening story and I enjoyed it, if you like non fiction, I would recommend. Thanks to #Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC,

I hadn’t realised this was a true crime rather than fiction based on a true story so not my usual genre. It was clearly extremely well researched and the facts around the case were explained well. An unsettling tale which was nevertheless not a difficult book to read.

This book has a slow build up. With a non-fiction book such as this one, it is tempting to go online and look up information on the case, but there is no need to do so with The Electrocution of Baby Lawrence as Overmyer gives us all of the information we need even the pedrigree of lawyers involved in the case. By the time you are done reading this book, there is no need to ever look up any other details online. You will be very well-versed in what happened to Baby Lawrence Noxon, the 6 month old victim of infanticide.

One thing that Overmyer does well is to thoroughly explain the times in which this case occurred. It was not a politically correct time. Corruption ruled. It is inferred that you could get away with crimes if you knew the right people (well, this still happens today). The baby had what we now know as Down Syndrome and it was not as well-studied then as it is today. People would abandon their kids in sanitariums to be cared for by the state when they had problems such as Down syndrome or any other medical issue that would cause "embarrassment" to their families.

This book opens up many questions.. Was Baby Lawrence's execution an accident or a "mercy killing"? Is it ever right to perform a "mercy killing"? "How do you judge quality of life?" "What makes a person worthy of life?" These are questions that I'm sure Noxon's community had to consider during and after the trial. Nowadays, we don't see Down syndrome as this horrible thing. We know that people with Down can live happy productive lives with their families and they don't need to waste away at these inhumane institutions.