After 41 years, two months and 15 days, John Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was freed from court oversight, concluding decades of supervision by legal and mental health professionals.
The lifting of all restrictions by U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington occurred on June 15 after Hinckley remained mentally stable in a community in Virginia where he has lived since 2016.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982 in the shooting of Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy Mc-Carthy, and Washington Metropolitan Police officer Thomas Delahanty. He was committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington for more than 30 years, before being granted convalescent leave five years ago. He lived with his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia, until she died this summer.
In a letter sent before the attack, Hinckley, now 67, confessed that his motive in attempting to kill the President was to impress Foster, whom he’d been stalking after watching her in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. “This letter is being written only an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel,” he wrote. “Jodie, I’m asking you to please look into your heart and at least give the chance, with this historical deed, to gain your love and respect.”
Friedman, the federal judge overseeing Hinckley’s case, said on June 1 that Hinckley had shown no signs of active mental illness since the mid-1980s and had exhibited no violent behavior or interest in weapons.