Image courtesy of [Sebastião Salgado via Wikimedia]
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Freedom Possible for Attempted Reagan Assassin John Hinckley Jr.
In 1981 a 25-year-old John Hinckley Jr., armed with a .22 caliber revolver, attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton hotel in a deranged effort to impress actress Jodie Foster. Hinckley wounded four people, including Reagan. Now at age 59, the man responsible for almost killing Reagan could receive more freedom from the mental facility that has housed him for over 30 years.
Federal courts to decide whether Ronald Reagan shooter could be moved into his mom’s home http://t.co/cmIf7GFzfj pic.twitter.com/c3NST6IZBZ
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) April 19, 2015
At his trial in 1982 Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been confined at Washington D.C.’s St. Elizabeths Hospital ever since. Since December 2013 Hinckley has been allowed leave from the hospital 17 days a month to stay with his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia. A federal judge is currently weighing recommendations from Hinckley’s doctors that he receive more freedom. According to NBC Washington, this could mean he receives leave 24 days a month, which was previously requested, or full-time, year-round “convalescent leave” in town.
According to the Washington Post, mental health professionals have allowed Hinckley to take daily walks by himself and go on a number of unsupervised outings of up to four hours each month. He’s also allowed to drive to places where he is expected. But these outings aren’t without exceptions. Hinckley is required to carry a GPS-enabled cell phone during unsupervised activities and he and his mother must call the hospital at least once a day during each visit. His internet access has also been extremely limited and he is required to log all of his daily activities.
Critics of Hinckley’s potential release still see the man as a threat to society with a history of deceptive behavior including lying about his whereabouts, but his lawyer Barry Levin says that’s not the case. According to CBS News, Levine said that psychological testing designed to predict violence shows Hinckley’s risk of being dangerous is “decidedly low.”
In 2014 Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, who was shot in the head by Hinckley during the assassination attempt, had his death ruled a homicide as a result of complications from his injuries. The shooting left him with slurred speech and partial paralysis that required the full-time use of a wheelchair. Prosecutors decided not to charge Hinckley with Brady’s murder after reviewing the case.
Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis has been outspoken on the issue, saying she doesn’t want her father’s shooter to ever go free. In a post written by Davis which originally appeared on her website Books by Patti Davis. and was republished by the Daily Beast, Davis writes:
I will forever be haunted by a drizzly March afternoon when my father almost died, when Jim Brady lay in a pool of blood and two other men — Thomas Delahanty and Timothy McCarthy — were gravely wounded. If John Hinckley is haunted by anything, I think it’s that he didn’t succeed in his mission to assassinate the President.
The judge is poised to decide soon if Hinckley will be granted more freedom, but the government seems unlikely likely to grant the would-be assassin full time leave, despite his doctor’s claims that he is now mentally competent. Hinckley may have not been found guilty, but he will most likely still be somewhat confined for the rest of his life.
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