John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate Reagan, granted unconditional release

Irwin

Irwin

Well-known Member
Location
Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
A federal judge approved a plan Monday to unconditionally release John Hinckley Jr., who had shot and wounded former President Ronald Reagan in 1981, from all remaining court-ordered restrictions, if he continues to follow rules and agrees to undergo regular mental health examinations.​

He's been incarcerated for 40 years, so I guess that's long enough. Still, to have someone like that walking among us doesn't seem right. Here's a before and after pic...

John_Hinckley_Jr_Mugshot_thumbnail.jpg
 

I always thought that he would be released after Reagan had passed. I doubt if he is a threat to anyone. He probably underwent a lot of psychotherapy over the years.
 
Call me old fashioned but when you shoot the President of the United States I think that you should lose your freedom for life.

I don’t believe that he poses a threat but I do believe that he should remain in some sort of supervised confinement for the rest of his life.

I also believe that it was inappropriate to allow him to spend time in his mother’s home.
 
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oldman said:
I always thought that he would be released after Reagan had passed. I doubt if he is a threat to anyone. He probably underwent a lot of psychotherapy over the years.
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Many mass murderers (including the Las Vegas shooter & most school shooters) were also undergoing psychotherapy & on all kinds of Rx drugs before their killing sprees.
 
Warrigal said:
Has he served his sentence? If so he should be a free man.
Forty years is a very long time to be imprisoned.
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Hinckley was found "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity." He has been living outside a mental institution for several years.
He's being released for the same reason many inmates & institutionalized persons are being released - to cut costs of their upkeep.
Naturally, that's not the reason given.
 
Warrigal said:
Has he served his sentence? If so he should be a free man.
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I don't think I agree, this is about risk to the population, and anyone who tried to kill the president and others can't be zero risk. He did succeed in doing brain damage to James Brady that eventually lead to Brady's death ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brady ). Leave him where he is...
Warrigal said:
Forty years is a very long time to be imprisoned.
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Not as long as James Brady will be dead.
 
win231 said:
Hinckley was found "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity." He has been living outside a mental institution for several years.
He's being released for the same reason many inmates & institutionalized persons are being released - to cut costs of their upkeep.
Naturally, that's not the reason given.
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Not justice in my opinion. Insane or not he should be confined for life.
 
People who have murdered others, are released every day.
I suspect that Hinckley will have a parole officer who can keep tabs on him.
Of all the types of criminals, murderers are the least likely to re-offend.
 
Tish said:
I am getting Page unavailable.

Wow, that is scary, considering most people with mental health issues will stop taking their meds.
Will they enforce him staying on his meds?
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Hoping counseling sessions and blood tests showing he is compliant with medications are a condition for his release ...but it does read unconditional so dunno. I'd imagine Jodi Foster isn't thrilled about the unconditional bit.
 
Alligatorob said:
Not justice in my opinion. Insane or not he should be confined for life.
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You mean "for the term of his natural life".

In my state a life sentence does not always mean the above.
If a non parole term is set the prisoner will eventually be freed.

The maximum sentence of imprisonment in NSW a judge can impose is a life sentence. Unless a non-parole period has been set, the offender will be ordered to spend the rest of their natural life in prison. The standard non-parole period of murder for example, is 20 years.
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If the prisoner is granted parole then they can be monitored after release. If they break the parole conditions they are returned to prison. Forty years ago a young man committed an horrendous crime. That does not automatically mean that today a much older man is still dangerous.
 
Warrigal said:
You mean "for the term of his natural life".

In my state a life sentence does not always mean the above.
If a non parole term is set the prisoner will eventually be freed.



If the prisoner is granted parole then they can be monitored after release. If they break the parole conditions they are returned to prison. Forty years ago a young man committed an horrendous crime. That does not automatically mean that today a much older man is still dangerous.
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Just read more about Hinkley. He wasn't in a regular prison. He's been in a psychiatric facility and has had supervised visits to family since 1999. He's actually been released with conditions since 2016 which included banned from speaking to the press; required to work three days a week; allowed to drive no more than 30 miles (48km) from his mother's home, or 50 miles if accompanied; see a psychiatrist two times a month. Also in the 2016 conditions were that he can't contact Reagan's children, other victims or their families, or actress Jodie Foster, who he was obsessed with at the time of the 1981 shooting.In 2022 all conditions will be lifted ...a mistake imo. I don't think it's unreasonable to prohibit contact with Foster, the Reagans, Bradys or others involved and to require psychiatric visits for the rest of his life.
 
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senior chef said:
People who have murdered others, are released every day.
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Yes, and I think that is wrong.
senior chef said:
Of all the types of criminals, murderers are the least likely to re-offend.
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Maybe, but more of them reoffend than we should have to live with. From one study:

A preliminary study by the authors of 894 Western Australian males arrested for homicide offences during the period 1984-2005, and subsequently released from prison, found that 177 (19.8%) of the 894 were subsequently re-arrested for another grave offence (any violent offence including breaking into a dwelling) by the end of the follow-up time (December 31, 2005). Among these 177 men, 13 (7.3%) were in fact re-arrested for another homicide offence. https://criminology.research.southwales.ac.uk/cirn/research-projects/reoffending/

That is way too high to be releasing these people.
Warrigal said:
That does not automatically mean that today a much older man is still dangerous.
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The study I cited above was from Australia, and those statistics are just too high. And of course the real rate is probably higher, not all are caught.
 
Think about this. If he is ordered to sty away from certain people why is he out? Is he a threat or not? Madness is a part of the act of trying to kill a president unlike the everyday shooting we see.
 
Alligatorob said:
Yes, and I think that is wrong.

Maybe, but more of them reoffend than we should have to live with. From one study:

A preliminary study by the authors of 894 Western Australian males arrested for homicide offences during the period 1984-2005, and subsequently released from prison, found that 177 (19.8%) of the 894 were subsequently re-arrested for another grave offence (any violent offence including breaking into a dwelling) by the end of the follow-up time (December 31, 2005). Among these 177 men, 13 (7.3%) were in fact re-arrested for another homicide offence. https://criminology.research.southwales.ac.uk/cirn/research-projects/reoffending/

That is way too high to be releasing these people.

The study I cited above was from Australia, and those statistics are just too high. And of course the real rate is probably higher, not all are caught.
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On average one woman is killed every week in Australia by an intimate partner. Rarely rates a mention. I imagine the number in US is even higher given your greater population. Will keeping half a dozen high profile murderers in gaol for the rest of their lives make women's lives safer?
 
Warrigal said:
Will keeping half a dozen high profile murderers in gaol for the rest of their lives make women's lives safer?
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Perhaps. Assuming there are about 10 million intimate partners in Australia one death a week is a risk of about 0.005%. The repeat murder rate in the study was more than 1,000 times higher. So those murderers do represent a whole lot higher risk than intimate partners do. There are a lot more intimate partners so the total numbers are higher, but the risk to any given individual is not.

Not to discount the importance of intimate partner killings, they are awful and I believe we need to do more.
 
Disingenuous use of numbers, Alligatorob. It's not about statistical probabilities. It is about actual dead people. I'm pretty sure the parole board was careful to weigh up the probability of Hinkley attempting to win a lady's heart by shooting someone. The reason for his parole condition that he not approach certain people would be at their request because they would have been consulted by the parole board. Not unreasonable but not necessarily an indication that he still has designs on any of them.

One thing that rankles a bit with me is the assumption that Hinkley's crime was worse that others because he was targeting POTUS. Reagan's life, as I see it, was not more important than that of a mother of several small children who was throttled in her own kitchen. As people, neither is indispensable, especially to those who love them or depend on them. However, a president is replaceable and the constitution spells out how that will happen when any president dies or is killed while in office. To his family however he is irreplaceable. With that in mind, the assassination of a president is a tragedy but so is the random shooting of a common man working behind the counter in a gas station.
 
Warrigal said:
Disingenuous use of numbers, Alligatorob. It's not about statistical probabilities. It is about actual dead people. I'm pretty sure the parole board was careful to weigh up the probability of Hinkley attempting to win a lady's heart by shooting someone. The reason for his parole condition that he not approach certain people would be at their request because they would have been consulted by the parole board.
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There is no Parole in the Federal system. It's a Supervised release. If a person is found innocent by reason of Insanity and confined to a mental hospital, he will only be released if the Court finds he is no longer a danger to society etc. Is it similar in nature to parole? I guess you could say that, but technically it isn't.
 
And technically if a person is deemed to be insane i.e. unfit to plead or or mentally unable to understand the nature of the charges, he or she is not put on trial in the usual sense nor deemed to be innocent or guilty. Therefore there is no sentence but they can be confined to a mental facility until deemed safe to be released.

I don't know how Hinkley's case was handled but his treatment would have depended on how his lawyers represented him.
 

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