For the past year, under a judge's order, [John] Hinckley [Jr.] has spent 17 days a month at his mother's home in Williamsburg, a small southeastern Virginia city. Freedom has come in stages and with strict requirements: meeting regularly in Williamsburg with a psychiatrist and a therapist, volunteering. It has all been part of a lengthy process meant to reintegrate Hinckley, now nearing 60, back into society.
Court hearings are set to begin Wednesday on whether to expand Hinckley's time in Williamsburg further — possibly permanently....
April 19, 2015
"The last man to shoot an American president spends most of the year in a house overlooking the 13th hole of a golf course in a gated community."
"He likes taking walks, plays guitar and paints, eats at Wendy's and drives around in a Toyota. Often, as if to avoid detection, he puts on a hat or visor before going out...."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
42 comments:
Psychiatrists have not been trustworthy on the issue of crime since Freud.
The last man or woman to shoot an American president.
It's a uniassassin.
He had the great good luck to be tried by a DC jury for shooting a conservative Republican.
How long until he's hired as a professor by an Ivy League school?
His attorneys hope to make that a full-time arrangement.
won't happen.
Then there is the issue of what happens when the 89 y/o mom dies..
James Brady was also shot by Hinckley and his death many years later is considered a homicide.
Did this article have a Trigger Warning for Jodie Foster?
I am Laslo.
I can't help but wonder whether he'd be enjoying freedom 17 days a month if he'd taken a shot at a Democrat.
Just a nit, Professor. He's not the "last," merely the most recent. Which is why conservatives are concerned about what the Secret Service has devolved into under the leadership of Julia Pierson.
In common parlance, "last" can mean "most recent." Get over it.
A would-be presidential assassin who spends his days looking out upon a golf course? What could go wrong?
...doctors have testified that Hinckley's psychosis and major depression have been in remission for decades and that, while he still has a narcissistic personality disorder, its effects have diminished.
He should move-in with Obama.
If Hinckley had shot any prominent Dem he'd be buried so deep in Leavenworth he'd never see the sun.
If the plea were "guilty by reason of insanity," rather than "not guilty by reason of insanity," it would follow that when the insanity was cured, the punishment began. There would be a lot less inducement to plead insanity, and somewhat less lifetime left to enjoy lounging by the links once the cure and then the punishment was done. There would also be somewhat less inducement for psychiatrists to delude themselves that they have effected a cure.
In Baseball, a national sport, those who are declared 'out' in one inning, are reincarnated to play again in the next inning. Until the Umpire throws them off the field, they can keep playing until the gates close.
Hinckley just has a poor home run statistic. He wasn't ejected from the game.
Who knows, maybe Hollywood will put him in a movie with Jodie Foster.
It might seem like Mr. Hinckley is living the good life but I'll bet his mother is a giant pain in the ass.
Fuck that guy.
Sorry. Just living up to my handle, folks.
I'm not comfortable with the government getting involved in personality and political conformity.
If he is crazy then he is crazy, treat him as such and punish any bad behavior.
But when you grant the government the power to alter his political views about assassination or republicans, then you're getting very close to a line. Maybe not over the line yet, but I don't trust my government anymore to know where lines are.
If the government can require Hinckley to be re-educated, they can require me to be re-educated.
We see it in family courts all over the country. CPS takes someone's kids (invariably poor people) and then requires the parents to go to political indoctrination classes called "anger management" and "protective parenting." I think mostly these are currently good classes and mostly benign, but with politics being as they are today, I can see them being abused quite easily.
You want to get your kids back? Better start spouting out social justice propaganda. It's coming.
Like most things law today, NGRI has become a farce. It is treated, for all real intents and purposes as guilty.
"If he's deemed by the medical experts to no longer be a threat to himself or others, he's free, as is anyone not guilty of any crimes."
Yes and this is why the insanity defense is a problem.
Read "Anatomy of a Murder" sometime. Not the movie; the book by a Michigan supreme court justice.
I noticed in the paper today, the WSJ, that there was a page devoted to this in the front section, then a page devoted to the OKC Bombing, and then a page devoted to the Boston Marathon bombing. Ridiculous. Was is this -- National Remember a Tragedy Day?
I didn't read any of the articles. Why isn't the State Journal doing any local reporting?
I am wondering how much money has been spent by taxpayers to provide his life life in LaLa land? What has been learned?
"There ain't no sanity clause!"
The Hinckley attack brings to mind Agent Tim McCarthy, part of the security detail. As Reagan is shot, Tim has turned to face the shooter and spread out like a hockey goalie.
Tim took one bullet in the gut.
Which brings to mind a good Eastwood movie line.
Frank Horrigan: How's the First Lady? She ask about me?
Lilly Raines: Have you gotten to know them yet?
Frank Horrigan: Well, I normally prefer not to get to know the people I'm protecting.
Lilly Raines: Oh, yeah? Why's that?
Frank Horrigan: Well, you never know. You might decide they're not worth taking a bullet for.
He should be tried for the murder of Brady, but for the insanity of the insanity defense.
Methinks the insanity, Judcially determined should be determined to be the same length as the sentence would have been, life without parole.
I hope and suspect that there are scopes trained on that guy 24/7/365. Unlike the gyroscopes circling around Washington.
What about the two women who tried to kill Gerald Ford in September 1975?
Squeaky Fromme is out of prison. Her gun didn't go off.
So is Sarah Jane Moore. Her shots were deflected by a bystander, but she wounded a taxi driver.
So, what's the problem with Hinkley? Other than the fact he actually hit who he was aiming at?
Also, don't forget the guy who threw a grenade at George W. Bush in 2005.
There's also the guy who crashed a Cessena into the White House lawn in an attempt to kill Bill Clinton, but he died in the attempt.
You think they'd have learned from that one.
Good gig if you can get it.
kzookitty
Unfortunately, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. My bet is this does not end well.
One place Obama won't be playing golf.
And to think Vaughn Meader's career ended after JFK was assassinated. Of course not by him. One of the funniest albums ever...The First Family.
He went to my high school, so we followed the story closely. Plot is very basic:
Social outcast obsessed with Hollywood starlet begins correspondence with her, her responses include the usual 2 Minute Hate rant against Reagan, social outcast attempts to murder Reagan to gain her favor.
Jodie Foster is one of my favorites. Great intellect, great skill. But there is an understory here that hasn't been told.
Back in the 80s I read a long story on Hinckley in some magazine and, from the accumulated data it presented about him, it seemed pretty darned clear he was mentally ill.
"MadisonMan said...
Why isn't the State Journal doing any local reporting?"
Well there was the announcement that the Tony Robinson decision is on Ozanne's...don't want to talk about that.
Also four cases of drive-by shootings....don't want to talk about that.
Cuz Madison is awesome!
Sirhan Sirhan?
Fen - Interesting. I remember the LSM (1980s vintage) always obfuscating that point, usually hinting that in some never quite explained way the assassination would enable his desired affair with Foster to progress, and your reason is logical.
WRT to the insanity defense, I assume that would be effective with respect to the reason he targeted Reagan but what about Brady and the SS agent? I've always heard it expressed as 'intent following the bullet' which I take it means he can't claim that their shootings were purely accidental. Does the insanity defense apply to all of his victims due to his delusions about Reagan?
My hope is, if he is really considered rehabilitated, that he is in fact, and that there will be sufficient structure in the world where he's currently spending 17 days a month to keep him steady.
Don't have much of a recollection of Reagan's assassination attempt, as I was a kid at the time, and get things mixed up with Pope John Paul II's. Was surprised to read that Agca's actually been released from prison in Turkey; he sounds like a mess.
***
It'd seem to me that the nature of an insanity defense has changed in the US in the interim between Hinckley's trial and that of Jared Loughner, not to mention James Holmes's upcoming one. Isn't this harder to argue now?
Post a Comment