In early 1943, the 43-year-old wife of a prominent attorney in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, gave birth to a son with Down Syndrome. Six months later, while in his father’s care, the infant was electrocuted to death in what was initially thought to be an accident caused by Dad’s tinkering with frayed appliance wires. Soon, authorities reconsidered the case and arrested the boy’s father. Ironically, he now faced electrocution by the state for first-degree murder.

The Electrocution of Baby Lawrence is about the case against the accused, attorney John Noxon Jr., a well-respected (but not well-liked), Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy New England law family. He walked with canes after contracting polio in college, but it didn’t stymie his lucrative career. His neighbors said he was a bully as a child and cruel as an adult. Noxon’s wife, Margaret, was the socialite daughter of a physician who could trace her American lineage back to the 17th century.

Unfortunately, what should’ve been a page-turner is instead a slog. This tragic tale cried out for an author with the narrative skill to re-create an interesting and insightful account of true events. Instead, the book is a dry recitation of facts with distracting asides that provide necessary context but little color.

James E. Overmyer should’ve had the tools to keep readers riveted: He was a crime reporter for a local newspaper, a case-preparation assistant in the Berkshire County district attorney’s office, and an administrator in the New York courts. He also had contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the trial, court records, witness transcripts, and the luxury of hindsight. In fairness, when he writes about the legal process — as he does in the last chapter, where he ties up loose ends — Overmyer knows what he’s talking about and explains it succinctly for the lay reader. And despite the underwhelming prose, the overarching, tragic story makes this book worth reading. Was poor Baby Lawrence’s death an accident, a mercy killing, or a murder? We’re never quite sure.

The Noxon infant was slow to develop strength and unable to focus his eyes. A month before his death, Lawrence was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. Such a child in those days would be horribly described as a “Mongolian idiot” because of characteristic facial features resembling the Mongols of Asia and the low IQ associated with the condition. Caused by an extra chromosome, Down Syndrome is diagnosed in roughly 5,700 babies in the United States each year, primarily those born to older mothers. (Because of prenatal testing, about 92 percent of Down Syndrome pregnancies are now terminated.) Today, Lawrence might be mainstreamed in school and able to live a productive life commensurate with his abilities. Back then, his parents were urged to lock him away in a substandard state facility for the “feeble-minded” for what promised to be a short, miserable life. They refused.

On September 22, 1943, Margaret was in the garden picking corn for dinner, the housekeeper was in the kitchen, and Noxon was in the library of the large family home changing vacuum tubes in a console radio when he realized he needed a tool from the garage. With him was Lawrence, who earlier had wet his diaper. Before leaving the room, Noxon placed the wet baby on the floor on a metal tray (!) within reach of a ragged extension cord. He claimed he parked his son on the tray so the diaper wouldn’t stain the carpet. When Noxon returned minutes later, he found the child dead, tangled in the cord. The prosecutor later argued that Noxon deliberately shocked Lawrence with the wires, and that the large burn mark on the baby’s arm proved it.

Rather than call police upon discovering the child, Noxon called Lawrence’s pediatrician, who summoned the medical examiner; both men concluded it was an accident and released the body to a funeral home. Noxon immediately burned the extension cord and his baby’s clothing in the incinerator, asserting he couldn’t stand to look at them. The next day, the medical examiner had second thoughts about the “accident” and alerted the local police chief. Noxon was arrested four days later.

The trial was a who’s who of Harvard Law School; the elite institution was the alma mater of Noxon, the district attorney, defense lawyer Joseph Buell Ely (who’d been governor of Massachusetts in the early 1930s), and the judge. Under unenlightened 1940s law, Noxon was denied pre-trial discovery, tried by an all-male jury, and forced to sit in the center of the courtroom in a locked iron cage. His first trial, in February 1944, ended in a mistrial after two weeks, when a juror had a breakdown after seeing evidence of electrical burns on Lawrence’s body (Massachusetts did not seat alternate jurors at the time).

The second trial, in May 1944, featured another Harvard grad, future New York City medical examiner Milton Helpern, who, with 100 murder trials under his belt, testified as an expert for the defense. Then Noxon took the stand and said, “That baby was dear to me.” No matter: The second jury came back with a first-degree murder conviction in five hours, and Noxon received an automatic sentence of death in the electric chair.

Within five years, however, he walked out of prison a free man — a testament to the power of privilege. Before that, though, high-profile academics, clergy, journalists, and women’s clubs were already demanding his death sentence be commuted. Even if he deliberately killed his son, the public now saw it as a “mercy killing.” Still, amidst calls for clemency, the local Berkshire Evening Eagle editorialized:

“Those who wished to believe the story [of an accidental death] were faced by an inexorable alternative. If the baby could not move, how did he manage to touch the wire? If he could move, what business had his father to leave him for 15 minutes on a metal tray within a foot or so of a wire carrying a lethal charge?”

Further, autopsy photos revealed that Lawrence had a burn covering the entire width of his forearm below the elbow, prompting the author to raise another troubling question:

“Did the jurors wonder how two bare spots on a trouble cord, one only three-quarters of an inch long and the other only a quarter inch, in contact with the baby’s skin for only a few minutes, according to Noxon, could have caused a horrendous burn like that?”

Apparently, they did, even if those who later called for Noxon’s freedom did not.

Diane Kiesel is a former judge of the Supreme Court of New York and an author. Her next book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law, will be published in February by the University of Michigan Press.

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