Twenty-two years after he was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast D.C., John Hinckley Jr. wants a little freedom. He has asked a federal judge for unsupervised visits to his parents’ home lasting up to four days, with no more than two weeks between each visit.
Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan and seriously wounded then-Press Secretary James Brady and two law enforcement officials in 1981, has been taking day trips to his parents’ home in Virginia for a year.
The decision is up to Judge Paul Friedman. His choice is simple: He can respect the rights guaranteed to Hinckley by our Constitution or he can succumb to popular opinion dictated by fear.
Hinckley’s case was hardly normal. When the trial began, the facts of the case were clear. The president and three others were wounded, and Hinckley had shot them all. The issue under debate was whether Hinckley was mentally capable of understanding what he had done.
Then the case got stranger. It quickly emerged that Hinckley’s assassination attempt was an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed.
“Jodie, I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you,” he wrote in a letter to Foster just before the assasination attempt.
Before the trial began, three psychiatrists hired by the defense diagnosed Hinckley with schizophrenia. The jury concurred, finding him not guilty by reason of insanity. That verdict was delivered under the assumption that Hinckley would be released when he was no longer mentally ill or dangerous, according to Georgetown Law Professor Heathcote Wales, a specialist in law and psychiatry.
Now that The Washington Post reports that doctors at St. Elizabeths have declared Hinckley’s illness to be in remission, Friedman has to decide whether Hinckley should be allowed unsupervised, overnight outings.
But Friedman already ruled last year that Hinckley poses no threat to himself or to others.
If Hinckley hadn’t once tried to kill the president, most would agree that his requests are reasonable. Wales laid it out clearly: “He’s being held because he’s famous,” he said.
It is understandable that the American people would not want to see this man released. Unfortunately, it isn’t their decision to make. A fairly-chosen jury delivered a verdict of not guilty, fully understanding that Hinckley could one day be released. That day has come.
