Word: dahmer
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...Jeffrey Dahmer's deeds beggar the imagination. The 31-year-old former chocolate-factory worker, who is charged with the murder of 15 young men, reportedly drugged some victims and performed crude lobotomies on them in an attempt to create zombie-like companions. He had sex with some corpses and dismembered bodies, tossing hands in a kettle and storing a severed head in the refrigerator as well as a heart to be eaten later. Who doubts that Dahmer's behavior is mad? But is he insane...
That's the vexing question that will face 12 jurors in the trial that opens this week in Milwaukee. Dahmer has pleaded guilty to the killings, but contends that he cannot be held criminally responsible because of mental illness. If found insane, he will be sent to a state mental hospital, where after a year he could begin petitioning for release; if judged sane, he will go to prison for life. The sensational trial is sure to reignite debate on the insanity defense, one of the messiest and most controversial areas...
...most ironic aspects of the book's reception is that American reality seems to have upstaged the events which Ellis is depicting. Ellis, who has condemmed the American people's frightening ability to absorb atrocities, hoped to create a uniquely disturbing work, but he failed. Jeffrey Dahmer's slaying of homosexuals in Wisconsin, the racially motivated slaughter of Yankel Rosenbaum and inner-city realities overtook his work...
...political argument is not even the most important point in favor of the law. To allow a murderer like Jeffrey Dahmer to profit from telling the story of why, and, even more grotesquely, how he murdered his victims does not send a message that society considers such acts despicable; indeed, it almost seems as if the government is making a deal with the convict: "You do the time, and if you write a book in prison, it's fine with us if you make a ton of cash to spend when...
...psychotic villains, and perhaps it is a sad commentary on modern society that so many people are fascinated by evil and death. However, no matter how evil Hannibal Lector and his brethren may be, the fact remains that in real life they never killed anyone. Criminals like Hill and Dahmer did. Though some may find their stories gripping, society--and the Supreme Court--should not provide an incentive for people who have caused so much pain to publish, and profit from, the tales of their evil...