Home » John Hinckley is going to be released from supervision

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John Hinckley is going to be released from supervision — 18 Comments

  1. Is this an application of “Hard cases make bad law”?

    Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law . . .

    “The maxim dates at least to 1837, when a judge, ruling in favor of a parent against the maintenance of her children, said, ‘We have heard that hard cases make bad law.’ The judge’s wording suggests that the phrase was not new then.

    “Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. made a utilitarian argument for this in his judgment of Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1904): ‘Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance… but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment.’

    “Holmes’s dissenting opinion in the case, which applied the Sherman Antitrust Act to the securities company, has been described as a reaction to President Theodore Roosevelt’s wish to dramatize the issues of monopolies and trusts.”

  2. If Hinkley commits another crime, I think the appropriate consequence for the medical officials that signed off on his release is the loss of their license to practice and mandatory civil damages for the victim’s closest relatives.

    The desire to help the mentally ill is admirable. The hubris that imagines an ability to cure is reprehensible.

    Psychologists, psychiatrists, politicians and social workers should face the consequences of their actions just like anyone else. The graver the offense, the graver the proportionate consequence.

  3. I got my BA is psych in 66. With apologies to Neo, my takeaway is that they don’t know nearly as much as they want you to think they do. Or that they think they do.

    Ellkins, in 59, wrote a book on Slavery. Reread it a couple of months ago. Didn’t wear well. He went hard on Freud, who’s barely a punchline now.

  4. Did anybody ever break the news to him that Jody Foster is married to a woman?

    Not to worry– the Jenner formerly known as Bruce will fix him up with an accommodating endocrinologist and a surgeon so that he can become a transwoman– and steal Jodie away from her current wife.

  5. In response to Walter’s question I was going to offer that its not just some women who think that the right woman could straighten out a gay man. That the reverse holds true as well.

    But I have to say that I like PA+Cat’s response much better.

  6. “And press secretary James Brady, whom Hinckley wounded, was disabled for the rest of his life, and his death 33 years was ruled a homicide”

    Did you mean 33 years later, or 33 years ago?

  7. Thirty-three years later, I think.

    I just don’t know if people with these severe psychiatric disorders are ever “cured.” Someone should take responsibility to see Hinckley doesn’t get hold of any pot.

  8. Hinckley used a rather puny 3″ barreled .22LR revolver, but he used exploding bullets. A tiny primer charge loaded into the bullet’s hollow point. I read about this many years ago, and knew that the bullet that hit Reagan only hit soft tissue and did not explode. I wasn’t sure about Brady.

    From Nat. Review:

    Interesting aside: Decades ago, bullets with a small explosive charge in the tip (using the same explosive that fires the bullet) were on the market. They were widely regarded as novelty items, but the idea was that the tiny explosive charge would fragment the bullet on impact, amplifying the normal expansion effect. Some of these bullets were marketed under the brand name “Devastator,” and John Hinkley Jr. used a .22 caliber version in his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Of the six rounds he fired, only one seems to have exploded, the one that struck James Brady. Reagan was hit by a ricochet, and doctors wearing body armor removed an unexploded round from D.C. police officer Thomas K. Delahanty, who was wounded in the assassination attempt. This episode has given rise to a kind of urban legend among doctors and coroners regarding exploding bullets, addressed by a fascinating report in the Journal of Clinical Pathology. The authors of the paper chastise their colleagues for conflating expanding bullets with exploding projectiles.

    Urban legend indeed. The military does have some very serious exploding bullets used in .50 cal. guns.

  9. “The military does have some very serious exploding bullets used in .50 cal. guns.”

    For Anti-Materiel Use only, of course 😛

  10. Cartridge, caliber .50, high-explosive incendiary armor-piercing (HEIAP), Mk 211 Mod 0
    A “combined effects” cartridge, the Raufoss Mk 211 Mod 0 HEIAP cartridge contains a .30 caliber tungsten penetrator, zirconium powder, and Composition A explosive. It can be used in any .50 caliber weapon in the US inventory with the exception of the M85 machine gun.

    Well, armor-piercing is often anti-material (e.g. busting engine blocks), but often not too.

    In the Iraq war, sniper Marine Staff Sgt. Steve Reichert spotted two combatants with an RPG weapon and extra rockets walk into range of our troops and hide behind a concrete block wall while preparing. Reichert just happened to have a few Raufoss rounds for his Barrett sniper rifle and he fired one at the correct point on the concrete wall resulting in two kills.

  11. I am divided on this. I haven’t met many people who can be that supervised, and then just go out and take their meds on their own. Nearly every person I know with an actual illness usually can’t take their meds without supervision (or even with) with full regularity.

    OTOH, had Hinkley just pled guilty and done his time, he would have been out on parole a decade ago probably, and would be free and clear today parole or not (as he would have run the statutory maximum time in jail).

    He fulfilled the law as written. Sometimes we have to just realize that we did our best, and move on in that situation. As Roper was told, we have to give even the Devil the benefit of law, for our own sake.

  12. Another example of why the courts should have a “guilty but insane” result. Treat the insanity and then serve the time for the crime. No one doubts that Hinckley shot the president and others, yet the verdict pretends no one committed the crime.

  13. }} John Hinckley … is being released without conditions.

    I’m sure Jodi Foster is thrilled.

    She’s a liberal twit, so I’m not all that concerned, but it’s got a certain amusement factor, nonetheless.

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