Hinckley, 61, will be allowed to live full time with his 90-year-old mother starting August 5, though his release has restrictions. CBS News anchor Dan Rather said on his nightly broadcast, “If John Hinckley has the will and the way, he will probably down the road ask to be released from St. Elizabeths on the grounds that he is no longer unsafe”.
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“After thirty-four years as an inpatient at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, and in view of the foregoing findings, and the successful completion of over 80… visits to Williamsburg over the last 10 years, the Court finds that Mr. Hinckley has received the maximum benefits possible in the inpatient setting”, Friedman wrote in a 103-page opinion.
On March 30, 1981, Hinckley opened fire with a revolver outside the Washington Hilton hotel, where Reagan had just addressed labor leaders.
The man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan will continue to live under a number of restrictions when he leaves a Washington mental hospital next month. He also hit Reagan’s press secretary James Brady in the head. Brady survived but spent the next 28 years in a wheelchair. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Patti Davis, daughter of late former President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan, speaks during the funeral service for the former first lady at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on March 11, 2016, in Simi Valley, California.
“At that time, it was incumbent on the prosecution to prove you were sane if you claimed you were insane”, said Del Quentin Wilber, author of the book, “Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan”. And she said attempting to kill the president is a special kind of crime.
“You can’t say well if he shot the butcher it would be different”, Davis said. “He did try to shoot a president”.
It’s also safe to assume that many Americans simply won’t care that the government may have used a psychiatric hospital as a prison or at least the means to offset what many might have viewed as an unfair verdict in the original case. Doctors report his depression and psychosis are in full remission. As of now, he spends 17 days a month with his elderly mother in Williamsburg, Va. He’s going to movies, playing guitar, volunteering at church. And he now will be able to go home and live with his mother while she is still alive, which represents a major victory for them. “Or decides, I don’t need this stuff?”
McCarthy, now the police chief of the Chicago suburb of Orland Park, says he is a bit perturbed he didn’t get a notification of the judge’s decision and hopes it’s the right one. No media contacts, no contact with victims, no Googling his victims or himself as well as bars on weapons research and pornography, and no social-media accounts without getting unanimous approval from his treatment team, or presumably Hinckley would get recommitted.
But Hinckley gained more freedom as his condition reportedly improved. “But it’s crucial to understand that what he did was not an act of evil”, Levine said in a statement.
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While his sister does admit that her dad forgave Hinckley, Davis maintains that the would-be killer should not be allowed to reenter society. But there’s no getting around the fact that a miscarriage of justice occurred to allow this release at all, especially given the nature of the shooting and the far-reaching consequences a presidential assassination would have produced.
