John W. Hinckley, Jr., has been committed to a mental institution for thirty-two years. From time to time people get re-interested in his case and articles are written about his mental state or how he spends his time. Since 2005, he has been allowed to make overnight visits to his mother. In 2013, he successfully petitioned to spend more time away from his institution, including being able to drive a car. But when former White House Press Secretary James Brady died last summer, the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide resulting from the bullet that Hinckley fired into his brain on March 30th, 1981. And that led to calls for Hinckley to be prosecuted for murder by the Department of Justice.
The DOJ dutifully looked into the possibility of bringing charges, but they have announced that they will not for two reasons. The first and most important is that Hinckley was ruled not guilty for reasons of insanity by a jury in a 1982 trial. The second is that, at the time of the shooting, the District of Columbia had a rule that you could only be charged with murder if your victim died within a year and a day after sustaining the injustices you caused them. But James Brady lived for more than three decades after the shooting.
Anyone who opens fire on our president is committing one of the gravest imaginable crimes, and I understand the demand for harsh justice for the crime of shooting the White House press secretary. But I think justice has been done in this case, and even if you think the insanity defense is a crock of bull, I don’t see how adding a prosecution at this late date would have improved the situation. Hinckley did not “get away” with his crime except in the limited sense that he wasn’t put to death. And even if he was put on trial for Brady’s death and found guilty, he wouldn’t get the death penalty. He wouldn’t be transferred to a general population prison.
In any case, the Justice Department wouldn’t have prevailed even if they had tried, so anyone complaining about this is just being political.
