December 2, 2011

Will shopping for books, as opposed to, say, shooting a president, keep Hinckley institutionalized?

by

John Hinckley, Jr.

Remember John Hinckley, Jr.? Right, he shot President Ronald Reagan, not to mention a cop, Secret Service officer, and Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was crippled for life — all for love of Jodie Foster. That was in 1981. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been in a mental institution ever since. (In fact, he’s been at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC — literary people, can you name its previous most famous resident?)

But wait — apparently, a good bit of the time, Hinckley has been out of the hospital, wandering around … unsupervised.

Yes, according to a Washington Post report, for a while now, Hinckley has been allowed out of the hospital for ten days every month to visit his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia. But now, at a hearing to decide whether to release him entirely, prosecutors have opened with potent evidence to deny him that freedom.

It seems he has a habit of sneaking into bookstores.

As the Post reports,

In opening statements, prosecutor Sarah Chasson said Secret Service agents will testify they performed surveillance on Hinckley without his knowledge earlier this year when he was allowed what he was told was unsupervised free time in Williamsburg.

On several occasions in July and September, Hinckley was supposed to go to the movies or shopping but instead went to bookstores where he looked at books about Ronald Reagan and presidential assassins, Chasson said.

 

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

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