Hinckley Jr., the man who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, will be released from a government psychiatric hospital over 35 years after the assassination attempt, a U.S. federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
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“John Hinckley is responsible for the shooting of President Reagan and three other courageous men”.
The order allows Hinckley, Jr.to live full-time in Williamsburg, Virginia, but still under certain restrictions.
The judge’s order requires authorities to return Hinckley to Saint Elizabeth’s if he violates the terms of his release.
He’s also barred from contacting the family of James Brady, who died in 2014 as a result of his injury in the shooting, Timothy McCarthy and Thomas Delahanty, who were also injured in the shooting, and Jeanette Wick, a hospital employee who he reportedly stalked in the 90s.
Reagan was shot during the March 30, 1981 assassination attempt in Washington, D.C. and underwent immediate surgery.
Foster, who co-starred in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, the film which inspired Hinckley to attempt the assassination, had no comment on Hinckley’s release.
Hinckley already has been staying at his mother’s home in a gated community on a golf course during monthly furlough visits. He was allowed day visits with his parents in 2003, and in 2006, he began visiting his parents’ home in Williamsburg, Virginia, for three-night stretches. Doctors now believe he has been cured of his mental illness.
Fowler added that she trusts the experts and judge who believe Hinckley is ready to be released.
Hinckley will be released from the psychiatric facility where he had been imprisoned for several decades.
Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis has previously opposed letting Hinckley spend more time outside the hospital. They say Hinckley did this twice. but both times he lied to supervisors and said he’d gone to the movies.
He must continue his mental health treatments.
Levine told NPR in an interview Wednesday that Hinckley is “profoundly sad and sorry for the pain he caused his victims, their families and the nation”. I didn’t put this exchange in my article, but Levine said to me, “The pope forgave the man who shot him”.
“This case shows that people who are ravaged by disease, mental disease, can get well and become productive members of society without imposing any threat of danger”, he said.
“John Hinckley is responsible for the shooting of President Reagan and three other fearless men”, according to the Simi Valley-based foundation.
“From a mental illness perspective, I just have some reluctance about having him roam free like this”, said Tom Campbell, 77, a retired manager at NASA.
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The longtime attorney for John Hinckley Jr. says his client “recognizes that what he did was horrific” but that shooting President Ronald Reagan and three others “was not an act of evil”. Reagan himself died in 2004 at the age of 93.
