Reagan’s shooter to ask court to lift everyday limits

Lawyers for John Hinckley Jr., the man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, are scheduled to argue in court Monday that he should be freed from restrictions placed on him after he moved out of a Washington hospital in 2016.

Since Hinckley’s move to Williamsburg, Va., a federal judge has made him live under conditions that dictate much of his life. For instance, doctors and therapists must oversee his psychiatric medication and decide how often he attends individual and group therapy sessions.

Hinckley, 66, has monthly appointments — now virtual — with Washington’s Department of Behavioral Health, which files progress notes with a federal court. And he must give three days’ notice if he wants to travel more than 75 miles from home.

Hinckley also has to turn over passwords for computers, phones and online accounts such as email. He can’t have a gun. And he can’t contact Reagan’s children, other victims or their families or actress Jodie Foster — with whom he was obsessed at the time of the 1981 shooting.

Hinckley’s attorney, Barry Levine, has said that Hinckley should get what’s called “unconditional release” because he no longer poses a threat.

“He has adhered to every requirement of law,” Levine told The Associated Press last month. “And based on the views of a variety of mental health professionals … he hasn’t suffered from a mental disease for decades.”

In a May court filing, the U.S. government had said that it opposed ending the restrictions. It also retained an expert to examine Hinckley and determine “whether or not he would pose a danger to himself or others if unconditionally released.”

Findings from such an examination have not been filed in court. But a 2020 “violence risk assessment” said Hinckley would not pose a danger.

Timothy McCarthy, a Secret Service agent who was shot during the assassination attempt, told the AP that he doesn’t “have a lot of good Christian thoughts” about Hinckley.

“But in any case, I hope they’re right,” McCarthy, 72, said of mental health professionals and the court. “Because the actions of this man could have changed the course of history.”

Hinckley was 25 years old when he shot and wounded the 40th U.S. president outside a Washington hotel. The shooting paralyzed Reagan press secretary James Brady, who died in 2014. It also injured McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty.

Hinckley was suffering from acute psychosis. When jurors found him innocent by reason of insanity, they said he needed treatment and not a lifetime in confinement. He was ordered to live at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington.

In the 2000s, Hinckley began making visits to his parents’ home in a gated Williamsburg community. A 2016 court order granted him permission to live with his mom full time under various restrictions, after experts said his mental illness had been in remission for decades.

Stephen Morse, a University of Pennsylvania professor of law and psychiatry, said Hinckley’s acquittal by reason of insanity means “he is not to blame for those terrible things that happened, and he cannot be punished.”

Decades of legal precedent are on Hinckley’s side when it comes to lifting restrictions, Morse said.

Most people in Hinckley’s situation are released from a psychiatric hospital if they’re no longer considered mentally ill or dangerous, he said. And if they follow court-ordered rules, unconditional release virtually always follows after a period of time.

“People tend to age out of dangerousness, even people with terrible records, by their early 40s,” Morse said. “If he hadn’t attempted to kill President Reagan, this guy would have been released ages ago.”

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman also has loosened Hinckley’s restrictions from about 30 conditions in 2018 to 17 conditions last year.

For instance, Hinckley was granted the right to publicly display his artwork and allowed to move out of his mother’s house.

Hinckley’s mother died in July.