One thing troubling her, she said, was that while at St. Elizabeths, Hinckley had written to the mass murderers Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.
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Following a two-month trial in 1982, a federal jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. Hinckley used six exploding “Devastator” bullets from a.22-caliber pistol. He died in 2005 at the age of 93. He will soon be allowed to live there full time from as early as 5 August, 2016.Hinckley was 25 years old and was suffering from psychosis and depression for several years when he shot the President and others. The federal court received reports on the state of Hinckley’s mental health throughout. Reagan was hit and almost died from the gunshot wound. He has completed more than 80 unsupervised visits with his family, according to the judge.
“Mr. Hinckley recognizes that what he did was horrific”, his lawyer, Barry Levine, said in a statement.
“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? But it’s crucial to understand that what he did was not an act of evil”, Levine said in a statement. He is profoundly sorry for what he did 35 years ago and he wishes he could take back that day, but he can’t.
The assassination attempt was the culmination of Hinckley’s obsession with Jodie Foster, which arose from her role as a child prostitute in the 1976 film “Taxi Driver”, in which a disturbed man plots to assassinate a presidential candidate.
But Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, expressed some resignation, blogging that she was “not surprised by this latest development, but my heart is sickened”.
Although the chief medical examiner ruled Brady’s death a homicide, saying it was caused by a gunshot wound he sustained in the 1981 shooting, prosecutors decided not to pursue any additional charges against Hinckley.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump also weighed in on the judge’s decision Wednesday, telling reporters at an unrelated news conference that Hinckley should not be freed. William Miller, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Washington, said the office is reviewing the ruling and has no comment.
While outside the hospital, Hinckley has had to comply with a series of restrictions, and a number of those will continue now that he will be living full time in the community. If Hinckley is haunted by anything, I believe, it’s that he didn’t succeed in his mission to assassinate the president.
I will forever be haunted by that cold afternoon, when my father nearly died, when Jim Brady (my father’s press secretary at the time, who died in 2014) lay in a pool of blood and two other men – Thomas Delahanty and Timothy McCarthy – were gravely wounded. He is not allowed to drive unaccompanied and may drive only within a 30-mile radius of Williamsburg, except for his monthly appointments in Washington.
If his treatment team approves, he may then move into his own residence by himself or with roommates, Friedman said. If his mother is unable to monitor him in another setting, his brother or sister, both of whom live in the Dallas area, have agreed to stay with him until other arrangements are made.
The government could not persuade the judge to order Hinckley to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and install a tracking device on his vehicle.
The presiding magistrate who issued the ruling, Judge Paul Friedman, believes Hinckley’s family will be able to financially support him.
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Hinckley’s release from Washington’s St. Elizabeths hospital has been more than a decade in the making. The judge ordered him to work or volunteer at least three days a week. He described it as “awkward” and uncomfortable to be tailed by Secret Service agents when he inquired about working at Starbucks and Subway, court records show.
