Lawyers for wannabe presidential assassin John Hinckley are back at it again.
The man who tried to assassinate President Reagan is trying to persuade a federal judge to allow him to visit his parents without being accompanied by staff from the psychiatric hospital where he has lived for more than two decades.
Naturally, certain people who aren't shills for murderous psychotics are dissenting.
Reagan's family and the government oppose the idea. In a recent filing, prosecutors wrote: "No one knows what Mr. Hinckley is thinking. He has boasted that he can fool medical experts and he continually has been proven deceptive about important matters throughout the years of his hospitalization."In an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Reagan's son, Ron Reagan Jr., said the would-be assassin now wants a "free pass" for his actions.
"Maybe if John Hinckley isn't insane any more he needs to just go to prison and there he can reflect for a while on what he did," the former president's son said.
via Fox News
This risky scheme came up last September, and Patti Davis was eloquent on her family's behalf when quoted then on MSNBC, as noted here. I hope her good sense on this will prevail this time.
Hinckley’s attorneys have said that giving him more freedom is “a critical component” of his treatment. My response to that is: Who cares? The man plotted carefully, calculating his moves, in an attempt to go down in history as the man who killed President Reagan. He forever changed the lives of the Brady family when he left Jim Brady lying in a pool of blood, his brain irreversibly damaged. Two other men, a secret service agent and a Washington police officer, were shot and injured. Justice was not served when he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is certainly insane; he is just as certainly guilty.Posted by Alan at November 17, 2003 12:11 PMI don’t believe for a second that John Hinckley is no longer mentally ill. Neither do the attorneys for the government who have collided with Hinckley and his attorney for many years now. I also don’t believe that mental illness means a person is not also extremely smart, deceptive and calculating.
If on Sept. 2 John Hinckley is granted the right to walk off hospital grounds with no supervision, we should all ask some very serious questions about our legal system. A methodical, narcissistic man who sought fame through murder knows the value of tenacity, patience, and deception. His ultimate fame might come from his ability to work the system.