The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, meanwhile, voiced its opposition to the Hinkley’s release.
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President Reagan was the target of an assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton hotel. Experts who testified at the hearing all agreed that Hinckley’s depression and psychotic disorder are “in full and sustained remission and have been for more than 20 years”, Fox News reports. Over the years, the court has loosened restrictions on him, and has allowed him to spend consecutive days at his mother’s residence in a gated community south of D.C. On a home visit years ago, he said he was going to the movies – and instead slipped into a bookstore and ended up near a shelf crammed with books on the assassination attempt.
Numerous restrictions attached to Hinckley’s temporary release will remain in place. After his release, he will continue to attend individual and group therapy and can not speak to the media. The Secret Service also periodically follows him.
Elizabeth’s, a government psychiatric hospital in Washington.
He will have to live with his mother for a year. After that, he can live on his own, with roommates or in a group home in the Williamsburg area. He must live with his mother for at least the first year and carry a cellphone that tracks his movements.
In a statement on her website, Davis said she will be haunted by the day her father nearly died in 1981, forever. It does not order him to wear an ankle-monitoring device.
Hinckley lawyer Barry Levine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The question with Mr. Hinckley is because he has this basic character flaw or personality flaw as it is called, of narcissism, can he really be changed?” All four initially survived the shooting but Brady, who was gravely wounded by a bullet to the brain, remained partially paralyzed until his death in 2014.
Also shot were U.S. Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy and Washington, D.C., police officer Thomas Delahanty.
He’s also not allowed to contact survivors of the attack – or Jodie Foster.
Reaction to his release was mixed.
But Michael Reagan, the late president’s conservative oldest son, tweeted that his father “lived” the Lord’s Prayer by forgiving Hinckley.
Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, just weighed in on the decision on her website. Prosecutors declined to charge Hinckley with murder, in part because they would be barred from arguing he was sane at the time of the shootings.
“The court finds by the preponderance of the evidence that Mr Hinckley will not be a danger to himself or to others if released on full-time convalescent leave to Williamsburg under the conditions proposed”. Asked how she made the connection between her fanatic and the would-be assassin, Foster said, “How many Hinckleys do you know?” “How can he be allowed to roam the streets as if nothing happened?”
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“I’m not sure he’s mentally stable”, said Yosway, who added that Hinckley should still be confined as a result of his “heinous” crime. Hinckley has displayed “no symptoms of active mental illness, exhibited no violent behavior, shown no interest in weapons”, nor exhibited any signs of being suicidal, Friedman wrote.
