Entertainment Weekly has previewed an interview with John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton on March 31, 1981. A new generation may be unaware that, in an alleged attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, Hinckley actually shot four people.
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Hinckley got within 15-20 feet of the president, a shocking failure of the Secret Service, and was able to unleash six shots. One shot hit Reagan in the lung, and the president narrowly escaped death. Hinckley shot White House press secretary James Brady in the head, causing brain damage and partial paralysis. The shooter also wounded Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy and Washington, D.C. police officer Thomas Delahunty.
The people can be forgiven for calling that a travesty of justice. And if anybody questions the role of psychiatry in court, it would be hard to blame them.
On June 21, 1982, a jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity, a questionable verdict given Hinckley’s planning and stakeout. When James Brady died in 2014, the death was ruled a homicide, but no murder charges were filed against the alleged Jodie Foster fan.
Hinckley served 35 years in a mental hospital and gained release on September 10, 2016. In 2022, his few restrictions were lifted, and the attempted assassin had posted some three dozen songs on YouTube and Spotify. At the time, assassination attempts were mounting a surge.
On July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, Thomas Michael Crooks, only 20 years old, was able to access an ideal rooftop shooting position. Crooks got off eight shots, one wounding presidential candidate Donald Trump in the ear and others killing Corey Comperatore and wounding David Dutch and James Copenhaver.
Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle was unable to explain how Crooks gained such an ideal perch and would not even give the number of shots he got off. The people might think the USSS would have learned something in the 33 years since 1981. On September 14, 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh was able to set up a sniper’s nest at a Florida golf course where candidate Trump was about to play.
This year, the president and his cabinet were slated to attend the dinner with the White House correspondents at the Washington Hilton. Cole Thomas Allen, 31, was able to book into the hotel with an arsenal of guns and knives. On April 26, Allen crashed through a security checkpoint and exchanged gunfire with security officials before being tackled.
Allen is being charged with attempted assassination of the president. Luigi Mangione is charged with the murder of health care CEO Brian Thompson in New York on December 4, 2024. Tyler Robinson is charged with the murder of Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA on September 10, 2025. Both cases should be viewed as successful assassinations. (RELATED: Memo to Mangione: Read the Unabomber Obituaries. Not the Manifesto.)
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People have a right to wonder if the lenient treatment of John Hinckley Jr. might encourage aspiring assassins or murderers in general. As it happens, Hinckley is hardly the only beneficiary of the insanity defense.
Last year the Connecticut Psychiatric Security Review Board (PSRB) granted conditional release to Tyree Smith, who in 2011 axed Angel Gonzalez to death, then ate part of his brain and an eye. Smith was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a forensic hospital for 60 years. Members of the victim’s family believed that Smith should “never be out.”
North of the border in 2008, on a Greyhound bus, Chinese immigrant Vince Weigang Li murdered Timothy McLean, who was returning from work at a summer fair. Li stabbed McLean, cut off his head, then ate the victim’s innards.
Li was charged with second-degree murder. Based on a psychiatric diagnosis, the cannibal was found not guilty of the crime. Confined to a mental institution, Li gained full release in 2017. That drew a protest from the victim’s mother, Carol deDelley.
“Vince Li committed one of the most horrific murders in Canadian history and has faded back into society,” she told reporters. “My son is still dead.” So is James Brady, while the man who shot him and nearly killed President Reagan gets attention from Entertainment Weekly.
The people can be forgiven for calling that a travesty of justice. And if anybody questions the role of psychiatry in court, it would be hard to blame them.
READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley:
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A Tale of Two Bridges: The China Bridge Disaster Waiting to Happen?
Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.
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