WASHINGTON — A federal judge said on Wednesday that John W. Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, would be unconditionally released on June 15, according to a lawyer for Hinckley.
Hinckley has been living in Virginia under various restrictions since 2016. The judge, Paul L. Friedman of U.S. District Court in Washington, had set the June 15 release date in September with several conditions, including that Hinckley, 67, remain mentally stable.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Friedman said Hinckley had met those conditions and reflected on the “long road” that Hinckley had faced, The Associated Press reported.
“He’s been scrutinized,” the judge said, according to The Associated Press. “He’s passed every test. He’s no longer a danger to himself or others.”
The District of Columbia’s Department of Behavioral Health reported this year that Hinckley’s psychiatric illness had been in remission for decades and that he did not present a danger to himself or others, federal prosecutors said last month, adding that the government had no reason to suggest Hinckley should not be granted unconditional release.
“This really is momentous,” Barry Levine, the lawyer for Hinckley, said in an interview on Wednesday. “It shows how one who is ravaged by mental disease, with good treatment and support from a loving family, which John had, and good mental health professionals, can actually salvage his life.”
After seeing the 1976 film “Taxi Driver,” Hinckley began to identify with the main character, who plots to assassinate a presidential candidate. Hinckley became fixated on Jodie Foster and moved to New Haven, Connecticut, when she attended Yale University.
In 1981, Hinckley wrote a letter to Foster describing his plan to kill the president and then waited outside the Washington Hilton for Reagan.
When Reagan left the hotel, Hinckley fired six shots, hitting the president; James Brady, the White House press secretary; Timothy McCarthy, a Secret Service agent; and Thomas Delahanty, a police officer. Brady died of his injuries in 2014.
In 1982, a jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Washington and confined for more than two decades. In 2016, Friedman ruled that Hinckley could live permanently with his mother in Virginia, though he remained under certain restrictions. Hinckley still lives in Virginia, though his mother died last year.