Reagan’s shooter gets unconditional release

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A federal judge has approved the unconditional release next year of John Hinckley Jr., who wounded President Ronald Reagan and three others outside a Washington, D.C., hotel in a failed assassination attempt in 1981.

Hinckley is now 66 years old and has been living outside a mental health facility for the past several years, a result of a gradual lightening of supervision

There is no evidence of danger whatsoever," Barry Wm. Levine said, adding that Hinckley has an "excellent" prognosis.

Prosecutor Kacie Weston said the Justice Department agreed to a settlement but wanted to monitor Hinckley for the next nine months because of two big changes in his life: He's living on his own for the first time in about 40 years, and because one of his primary doctors is preparing for retirement and disbanding Hinckley's therapy group. The Justice Department said it would file a motion with the court before June if it had fresh concerns about Hinckley.

Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman pointed out that "very few patients at St. Elizabeths Hospital have been studied more thoroughly than John Hinckley."

In 1982, a jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. He had been on trial for the shooting a year earlier of Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington Metropolitan Police officer Thomas Delahanty.

After the verdict, Hinckley was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, where he resided for more than three decades. Starting in 2003, restrictions on Hinckley gradually lessened.

The court has allowed him to release artwork and music under his own name, and Hinckley created a YouTube channel, where he sings and plays guitar. He had been working in a Virginia antique mall before the coronavirus pandemic.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation And Institute, however, said in a statement that it thinks Hinckley is still a threat and it strongly opposes his release.

I am mixed on this.

How do we know he isn’t going to become re-obsessed with Jodie Foster or anyone else?

Though if he is indeed past that, I see no problem with his released.

Obviously what folks worry about is that he might shoot either the current POTUS (Biden), or the current "once and future POTUS"(Trump), or make a bid to shoot both. Or shoot some other luminary.

What can I say...the expert doctors say he is cured of whatever drove him to do it back then... so who am I to argue?

All I know is what I see in the movies. And know that all of those fancy schmancy doctors all thought they had cured Jason...but he kept going back to slashing teenagers!

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman announced Hinckley will be released on June 15. The judge previously announced in September that Hinckley would be released so long as he remained in good behavior, which he has.

“If he hadn’t tried to kill a president he would have been released unconditionally a long time ago," Judge Friedman said at the time.

I think this sets a bad president, because now anyone will think they can get away with doing that to the precedent.

The CIA probably need to bring him in and check his programming. That's one manchurian candidate who didn't do his job properly.

So...the CIA wanted to off Reagan?

Well....the CIA had been headed by George Herbert Walker Bush for a year in 1976 under president Gerald Ford. And at the time Hinkley shot Reagen, Bush was Reagan's VP. So....

OHhhhh ...I see where your going with this.

Hinckley was a tool to off the POTUS so that HW Bush could take over, and become POTUS!

Very clever scheme by the CIA to get one of it's own in charge of the country.

I will have to give you a tin foil hat award for ...excellence in paranoia...for imagining that one!

I think Hinkley was the last of the random assassins of big named celebrities or politicians that started in the 1960s
JFK
Malcolm X
MLK
Robert Kennedy
John Lennon
Ronald Reagan

A lot of far righters were itching to assassinate Obama but by then security around the POTUS made it impossible for these grubs

Dude...he was forced to spend forty years of his life in a looney bin to earn this. How is that "getting away" with it?

Granted that its "soft time", and not "hard time" in the main population of a penitentiary. But its not just a slap on the wrist either. He didnt get off scot free.

BTW

You meant "it sets a bad precedent for...doing that to a president". But you wrote "a bad president for...doing that to a precedent".

I remember the day I turned on the TV and saw guys in suits standing around holding uzzis, and
immediately just knew they were secret service and the president had been shot.

And I was watching TV when the RFK assassination happened. I remember him giving the peace sign, leaving and then shortly thereafter chaos breaking out. I got upset and called for my mom who was in the kitchen telling her something bad just happened.

Dont forget former governor and POTUS candidate George Wallace (who lived but was put into a wheel chair by assassin George Bremer, in the Seventies).