BIG WIN FOR '81 REAGAN GUNMAN
Hinckley set for ‘unconditional release’
John Hinckley Jr., the man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, will be “unconditionally released” after reaching an agreement with federal prosecutors.
The agreement to lift Hinckley’s current restrictions was reached
during a Washington, DC, federal court hearing on Monday and will go into effect in June, NBC reported.
The judge agreed to lift all restrictions next year if Hinckley, 66, remains mentally stable.
Hinckley is currently under courtimposed restrictions after moving from a Washington psychiatric hospital to his mother’s home in Williamsburg, Va., in 2016.
He spent 35 years in the psych hospital after being found not guilty by reason of insanity for trying to assassinate Reagan on March 30, 1981.
Under the current court-imposed conditions, Hinckley is required to attend individual and group therapy sessions and must have doctors and therapists oversee his psychiatric medication.
He is also unable to own a gun and is banned from contacting Reagan’s children or actress Jodie Foster, whom he had stalked before the attack and bizarrely believed he could impress by killing the president.
Hinckley’s attorney in August asked for unconditional release, arguing his client was no longer a threat.
Federal prosecutors had opposed ending the restrictions in May, and retained an expert to determine if Hinckley would pose a danger to himself or others if he were to be unconditionally released.
A 2020 violence risk assessment by Washington’s Department of Behavioral Health found Hinckley would no longer pose a danger.
Hinckley was 25 when he shot Reagan outside a Washington, DC, hotel on March 30, 1981.
The president suffered a gunshot wound to his chest and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. White House press secretary James Brady,
Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy and a Washington police officer, Thomas Delahanty, were also wounded in the attack.
Brady was permanently disabled from the attack and died at age 73 in 2014. His death was later ruled a homicide stemming from the assassination attempt.