The man who shot and nearly killed President Ronald Reagan in 1981 — also gravely wounding Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, and downing Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and Metro Police Officer Thomas Delahanty — has been declared safe for unsupervised release starting in summer 2022. In 1982, John Hinckley, Jr., was found ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’, and his lawyer says his treatment succeeded. He has recovered from his mental illness. Should a would-be presidential assassin ever walk free? Can such a mental illness actually be ‘cured’?
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24 replies on “Hinckley Walks: Reagan’s Would-Be Assassin Soon to Be Completely Free”
EVIL is EVIL, period. EVIL does not wake up one morning and decides to be VIRTUOUS/GOOD. The GREATEST accomplishment of EVIL was ITS ability and IT did it successfully to convince the folks that IT was non-existent.
I’m one of those that think that this would never have been an issue if Hinkley had simply been immediately dispatched with extreme prejudice at the moment of the assault. Instead, the taxpayers have had to pay for 40 years of ‘care’ and ‘treatment;’ and now this multiple murderer and potential assassin walks scot-free because ‘yay, he’s all better.’
Meanwhile, how many dozens of truly innocent American citizens are right now locked away sans trial in solitary confinement–for the hubris of daring to enter the People’s House when invited in? At least one has now died while in prison.
How many statues of a common thug/criminal/addict/multiple felon have been raised, while the officer who had the misfortune of being present at his drug-addled death now has life imprisonment? He’ll never be as free as Hinkley is today.
Forgive me if my rage at the ‘justice system’ of this ‘constitutional Republic’ remains unabated.
I have never known of anyone being completely cured of any mental condition; many have been able to control their condition with medications as long as they take them properly. That, therefore, is the rub with Hinckley; he needs medications and must be monitored to continue taking them properly. If Hinckley is not perscribed medications, he must remain in constant observation as would any of your other mentally troubled ‘homeless’ or ‘street people’ need to be socially acceptable. (Most of them have not attempted to kill a President of the United States.) Irregardless of the his personally stated motive, John Hinckley Jr. not only attacked a man that day in 1981, he attacked the person who represented this country and attacked the person who had sworn to support and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, which provides safety for all Americans including our posterity. And that, in my mind means, he attacked the Nation as Pearl Harbor or the Twin Towers or the Pentagon did. My vote is to keep him under supervision for rest of his years. I have not heard any argument that changes my mind.
Scott, your final point is the one I have always hung by … I killed somebody (other than self defense or war). Ergo, I’m mentally insane. Yeah, we can argue until the cows come home about degree, but to my thinking, insanity is a BAD thing. Unfortunately, I have my doubthat it can be cured. Show me some examples.
I recall this case because it was a study in one of my college courses. There was a great book on Hinkley written by a Thomas Szasz. Some people say Hinkley was/is sick, others say he is/was sickening. Hinkley had carved and marked the bullets, he just didn’t buy them and load them into a gun. He stalked Jimmy Carter also. There was debate about the folded sulci in Hinkley’s brain, and whether that meant he was schizophrenic, or what percent of non-psychotic people had folded sulci also. During the past 5 years, I’ll bet he was monitored to be sure he was taking his meds. I can’t fathom someone who, if truly schizophrenic at age 26, became “cured” or “in remission” by the age of 66. I have a loved one who has severe mental health issues also, so people who are mentally ill with schizophrenia (or other illnesses) don’t as a rule just get better–generally they get worse as their brain ages.
Excellent point about the brain deteriorating as we age. None of us are immune to that. And yes, this is not the type of psychosis that developed due a specific stimulus. When the stimulus is eliminated, normal function (normal for that person, not necessarily to the rest of society) returns.
Here is an interesting question: If Hinkley goes out and does something, who would be accountable? How much doublespeak would these doctors spew?
I tend to come at these things with are they insane or are they evil? George Soros is evil. I’d never classify him as insane as he’s fully aware of what he has done or is doing. Not sure what to think about Hinkley, but I’d be searching his home for pictures or memorabilia of Jodie Foster, Reagan, Baker or anyone else that he shot. If any are found, that would be obvious proof to me that he hasn’t let go and he’s not ‘cured’. Apart from that, I would also be dubious of anyone making the decision to either continue monitoring him or setting him unconditionally free. Our judiciary seems to be void of conscience and / or common sense, and our mental health professionals deny science by referring to ‘birth persons’ as an accepted reality along with cramming puberty blockers into young children and adolescents as a valid treatment before the kids have any clue about what’s going on. This one doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies.
I also can’t help but wonder if he had shot Bill Clinton or Obama if he’d ever be set free.
Interesting point you make about Soros. Spot on that he is evil. But in my simple mind, evil is … insanity!
I have always wondered, why is it ‘innocent’ by reason of insanity? Why isn’t it ‘guilty by reason of insanity’? The deed was still committed. In my opinion, anyone who tries to murder another person is insane. I don’t care how they try to rationalize it, it’s an insane act.
It is not innocent, it is not guilty by reason of insanity. Courts never declare anyone innocent.
Spot on!
Gents, instead of not guilty by reason of insanity, I prefer guilty and insane. In that case, the individual is convicted of having committed the crime; however the court recognizes that they are insane and therefore cannot stand trial.
The individual is committed to a psychiatric care facility until such time as they are deemed, “sane.” Once that diagnosis is given, the individual then must stand trial for the crimes they committed.
If this were applied to Hinckley, once his doctors determined he was sane enough not to require committing, he would have stood trial and most likely been sentenced to life in prison, which is where he should be instead of free as a bird. Brady was never freed from his wheelchair.
Good discussion, and I agree that there are no easy answers. My two biggest issues with the early release are:
1) I see this becoming a presedent for a lot more early releases of people who’ve committed heinous crimes. Or is this just an example of a bigger problem? Here in Virginia parole boards have been early releasing without notifying the victims or their faamilies
2) The man who tried to murder a president will walk free while we’re still holding political prisoners in solitary confinement for basically putting their feet up on Pelosi’s desk
Before I watch this, I will note my responses to the following posed questions: “Should a would-be presidential assassin ever walk free? Can such a mental illness actually be ‘cured’?”
The answer to the second question presumes that some “illness” existed. Given that such a diagnosis assumes that people can actually determine the mind of another based solely upon actions and public statements, it is difficult to accept that Hinckley’s sentence was justified.
The answer to the first question is absolutely not while the other unanswered question remains.
I suppose Hinckley and many other’s would be glad that I am not responsible for such decisions. If I’d been judge, then the original sentence would not have been so lenient.
I do wonder two things:
In order to be in “full recovery” are there meds that he needs to take on a regular bases and what is the result with regard his mental state if he stops taking those meds? I have family friends who are on such meds and do quite well if they take there meds. But someone checks to make sure. Does Mr. Hinkley have such a support staff?
Did anyone get Jodie Foster’s opinion?
I too know of instances where someone really needs to be taking certain meds. It’s not my brother-in-law but it’s on that side of the family. It’s a situation I’m very familiar with because of the impact on my sister and her husband.
Those people tend to reject taking their meds unless there’s someone constantly supervising them. The reason for this is pretty obvious, a crazy person doesn’t know they’re crazy, they think it’s everyone else that has a problem and why should they take meds that ‘gum up their thinking’ anyway?
If he doesn’t take his meds the guy ends up living in a dumpster somewhere, filthy as an animal and eating garbage. He doesn’t use illegal narcotics either, he’s just like that naturally. His normal state is one that reduces him to such a degree of mental confusion that his body goes on autopilot trying to keep him alive with the very barest of necessities that can be scrounged from the local environment. While his mind, from his perspective, becomes so amazingly crystal clear as to be god-like in its perception. It’s really weird.
He’s better on meds and can live alone though he’s still really weird. Still, meds keep him from having a profound psychotic break with reality.
… But he thinks that the meds muddy up his thought process. So the tendency is to neglect those medications and relapse.
I’m explaining this so that others who don’t have first hand experience in this sort of thing can see that it’s a serious problem. So …
If John Hinkley Jr. is supposed to be taking meds someone really needs to be sure he actually does so. The person I’m talking about above never tried to kill anyone, that we know of. Let alone anyone as prominent as the President of the United States of America.
Hinkley did, his psychosis was so severe that he plotted, planned, equipped himself with the necessary tools and carried out his crazy scenario. He did this intricately and carefully to the point of selecting “exploding” bullets called “Devastators” for his firearms. The fact that he was able to approach and fire on the President from close range demonstrates his plotting and planning skills.
That’s a whole ‘nother order of magnitude of crazy. It’s not something to be dismissed and I’m not sure that “setting him free” is any real kindness to him either.
All that you say is true. I have multiple extended family members who need to be medicated, but none of them think they need it.
One of Mrs. Ron’s best gal pals has a sun who literally nailed blankets to the walls of his bedroom to keep the bad voices away. When they got him into a facility (much harder than it should be to do) they got him straightened out in a couple weeks. But two days after going off his meds because he didn’t think he needed them, he took his dad’s cane and beat him with it.
On his meds, not violent at all. Off them, he’s capable of violence. Capable of planning something really bad, who knows. Capable of hurting someone who may be home and trying to help him, absolutely.
So who makes sure that the meds are taken. Or do we just wait for the tumult and someone says, hmmph, my bad.
Exactly so and this is the problem with an unsupervised wannabe Presidential assassin. There’s just no way to know if he will or won’t relapse without his meds, or if he’s actually going to take his meds faithfully on his own if he’s not supervised.
The problem is that he’ll think he’s fine, and he might be while on his meds, then that he thinks that he’s “cured” and doesn’t need the meds anymore. By the time it becomes obvious what’s going on and that he’s not taking his meds someone could die.
This is common enough that if you and I know about it, the people releasing John Hinkley Jr. from supervision sure as hell should know about it too.
So I have to think that either those people are incompetent or there’s something more going on here. Maybe he doesn’t need meds and his psychosis has been managed in some other way but … I find that doubtful.
The same question about any crime needs to be asked with respect to the people deciding that letting Hinkley, or any other person now “cured” of their mental illness, out of the hospital is acceptable: Cui Bono? Who benefits from this? What point are they trying to make? Is there going to be a large number of inmates let out of hospitals because, hey if we let John Hinkley out, then surely my client can be left out.
As Brother Bob points out Virginia is pretty much letting anyone out on parole at this point. Can’t imagine they wouldn’t support this. Ironic in that there is a D politician in VA whose son killed himself shortly after being denied a spot in a facility that could have helped him. If I recall, he stabbed his father then killed himself.
At with most policies that are implemented because we care, this will not end well.
Seems to me that the powers that be, the people in elected office, care about the person on the wrong side of the issue. Maybe if they cared a little more about the innocent citizen that didn’t harm anyone over the perpetrator(s) of crime(s) that did in fact harm someone … Things might work out a little better.
But that’s just me and what do I know? Heck, I don’t even think Critical Race Theory is anything more than racism under a fresh new coat of paint. So I must be socially behind the times.
I’m becoming more and more doubtful that the people who are tasked with making logical sound judgements are capable of doing so. Too many are apparently afraid of being labeled negatively i.e. racist, homophobic, transphobic, mean, hateful, Nazi, etc etc. that they prefer to err on the side of leniency rather than common sense. Additionally, many of them simply don’t have the moral foundation to make any judgement. This is deadly to society as a whole. And if what I just described isn’t the case then nothing but capriciousness is in control.
Whether intentional or capricious, the result is the same. Which means that the right people aren’t being held accountable to the right people.
Honestly I don’t understand this obsession with what someone says about someone else on Twitter or Facebook or any of that drek. I’ve been on comment boards going way back to before the internet when you had to dial up to a Bulletin Board System.
Trolls, real trolls not the kind of thing I get accused of when someone says something dumb and I call them on it, have been around forever.
When someone on here at this site calls me a troll I know they’re just trying to shut me up. It’s the same thing as if they called me a Nazi, or homophobe (a particularly stupid thing to say considering what the word actually means) or a racist or any of those other things you pointed out.
I just ignore the real trolls, but I don’t use Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Snapchat, Tik-Tok or any of those complete time wasters either.
I guess that makes me odd but I learned better a long time ago.
Maybe we need to have a program of immunizing our leadership from the voices of the tiny minority on those platforms? It really does seem like those idiots are the ones in the driver’s seat. We need a way to get elected officials to ignore them, like Donald Trump seemed to have mastered so well. He had tens of thousands of people screaming at him over Twitter at any given time and it didn’t seem to phase him one bit.
I’m open to suggestions.
In one of these RA some time back, Scott or Steve had a stat that some ridiculously high number of the tweets were coming from the Blue Check brigade, which make up a small number of users; way beyond the 80/20 rule. Something like 95% from less than 5%. It’s just one big echo chamber that needs to be ignored.
The problem is that when it is positive the kind of people we elect love to hear the glowing remarks. Since they put such stock in the up, they naturally do the same with the down. Major character flaw in my opinion that shows they shouldn’t be elected in the first place.
Don’t follow public opinion, tell us what your values are and then stick with them.
I suppose it’s natural for people to like to hear positive things about themselves and not to like hearing negative things about themselves. It’s something you have to train yourself out of and even then … I don’t think it can be completely ignored either way.
We as social creatures are hardwired for that herd approval to some degree. Even a criminal, definitely an antisocial type, will bask in the approval of his fellow criminals.
There is an unimaginable, to us “normal” people, amount of ego satisfaction in being elected to high office. Years ago a group of fairly well-to-do men in my district back then, approached me to inquire if I would be interested, with their financial backing, in running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. I turned them down politely but flatly and made it clear that I would never be interested.
Still, it did amazing things for my ego to think that those people saw Senate caliber potential in me. To be honest looking back in 20/20 hindsight, I can’t say that they didn’t have some ulterior motive but even so … To this day I remember the event with a certain quiet pride.
So I can imagine what an ego rush it must be to actually run for and win an election like that. The problem with any kind of rush is that it’s all too easy to keep feeding it trying to regain that mountaintop. Knowing this was one among many other good reasons I said “no”.
I don’t think Donald Trump had that kind of a problem, he never ran for a public office before and his ego was plenty big enough without “President of the United States of America” preceding his name. In fact, though he was not at all a humble man I got the distinct whiff that he wasn’t all that impressed with the Office and just took on the challenge like he had others in his life previously. Which is a sensible approach for someone like him and another reason why I liked him as POTUS and still say he’s a dick as a person.
Perhaps he should have been a little more impressed with the Office. It’s an impressive job title even if your name is Donald J. Trump. If he’d have taken the pomp and circumstance a little more seriously maybe he would have been more “Presidential” and we’d still have him in the Oval Office trying to fix what’s wrong with this country.
Ah, well … Spilled milk, water under bridges and all that.
The thing is that HE didn’t seem to be swayed by things like Blue Check Brigade. If Trump really wanted to do this country a service he should be holding seminars and retreats with conservative leaders telling them why, what and how they should ignore such things.
Because getting back to the ego thing, voters elect a person to office but when he gets that ego kick and wants to maintain it he starts looking at polls and public opinion trying to keep that office. Then it seems to me he loses sight of the people who put him there and tries instead to please as broad a segment of the population as he can.
That is where the rub lies. I don’t think they had things like scientific polling in the days of the Founding Fathers or if they did, they either ignored them or the polling process wasn’t rapid enough to maintain relevance. I don’t think public opinion polls really started to come into play until at the earliest the invention and broad implementation of the telegraph.
It would make an interesting study on how the development and speed of the expression of public opinion has affected American politics.
Whatever the results of such a study, I would argue that the present day situation is more detrimental to the nation and really not even very good for those people who want so badly to stay in office. It seems to be baked into the bread now to the point where the bread is inedible.