Judge Grants Hinckley Outings With Parents

John W. Hinckley Jr., the man who shot President Reagan, won a federal judge’s permission Wednesday to have unsupervised visits with his parents beyond the grounds of St. Elizabeths mental hospital in Washington, where he has lived for the last two decades.

Lawyers for the 48-year-old would-be assassin argued that he had made sufficient strides in more than 20 years of psychiatric treatment that it was safe to allow him to spend time with his parents -- both of whom are 78 -- away from the supervision and scrutiny of the hospital staff.

Reagan’s wife, Nancy, and others close to the former president expressed disappointment at U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman’s ruling, which allows Hinckley to take up to six day trips and two overnight visits under his parents’ supervision. He must remain within 50 miles of Washington, which would preclude a visit to his parents’ home in Williamsburg, Va., about 150 miles away.

Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the assassination attempt on March 30, 1981, that severely wounded the president and White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who suffered serious brain damage. Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded.

The shooting took place outside the Washington Hilton hotel, where Reagan had just delivered a speech. The president was taken to the George Washington University Hospital and underwent emergency chest surgery.

“Although the judge limited Mr. Hinckley’s travel to the Washington, D.C., area, we continue to fear for the safety of the general public,” Nancy Reagan said in a statement. “Our thoughts are with all of Mr. Hinckley’s victims today, especially Jim Brady and his family, as they must continue to live with the tragic consequences of the assassination attempt.”

The U.S. attorney’s office, which opposed any unsupervised activities by Hinckley beyond the hospital grounds, has 30 days to appeal the ruling.

“Mr. Hinckley has continued to exhibit deceptive behavior,” Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a written statement. “It is unfortunate that the concerns of the Reagan and Brady families were not accorded more weight in this decision.”

Sarah Brady, the wife of the former press secretary, had asked Friedman to deny Hinckley’s request.

“We do fear for our safety. He ruined Jim Brady’s life once. We don’t want him to do so again -- either physically or emotionally,” she wrote in a letter to the judge.

Michael K. Deaver, who was one of Reagan’s closest aides in the White House and who was just a few feet away from him when he was shot, called the order “pretty disappointing,” and asked: “Would we even be talking about this today if Hinckley had been successful? I don’t get it.”

At the time of the shooting and his trial, Hinckley said he had targeted the president to impress actress Jodie Foster. He was diagnosed as psychotic and clinically depressed and was found to be delusional and obsessed with Foster.

Two decades of therapy and a steady regimen of antipsychotic drugs have led mental health experts who have examined him recently, including government psychiatrists, to agree that he is in “full remission” and has been for years. None said he was dangerous, and all agreed during three days of hearings that passes for day trips with his family were part of the natural progression of his therapy.

Hinckley had sought a limited conditional release from the hospital. The hospital had recommended that he be allowed to make overnight visits away from the Washington area. Both were denied.

Instead, Friedman established a complex set of procedures that would restrict Hinckley’s activities away from the hospital and would require reports on his behavior while under his parents’ supervision and immediately upon his return to St. Elizabeths after each trip.

Joseph diGenova, who as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia supervised Hinckley’s prosecution, said Friedman had issued a “tortured opinion” in which he was bound by the dictates of the law and by the unanimous opinions of medical experts testifying that the conditional release was part of the therapeutic process.

DiGenova said the judge had tried to recognize security concerns while allowing Hinckley some freedom consistent with the medical opinions presented in the courtroom last month.

“What you have at work here is a supreme irony that he is allowed to walk free in the community where the president lives,” DiGenova said.

In his ruling, Friedman said that the success of each visit would be assessed by the hospital staff before subsequent visits would be permitted. Detailed itineraries must be provided to the court two weeks before each trip, and to lawyers representing the government and Hinckley.

In addition, Hinckley and his parents must contact St. Elizabeths by telephone at least once each day during the visits. The judge said that if there were any signs of mental deterioration during a visit, Hinckley “will immediately be returned to the hospital.”

No overnight visits would be permitted until all six day trips were satisfactorily completed, the ruling noted.

Restricting Hinckley’s activities during the visits, the judge ordered that he and his parents have no contact with the news media during the visits, and that he have no contact in any way “during the course of the conditional release” with a woman -- Leslie DeVeau, a former patient at St. Elizabeths -- with whom he had been romantically involved at the hospital.

Hinckley was also ordered to take psychiatric medication while away from the hospital. If he is eventually permitted overnight visits, he must share a hotel suite with his parents, leaving only when accompanied by at least one parent.

Friedman’s decision noted that Hinckley had been permitted in recent years to leave the hospital campus on outings supervised by hospital staff, making about 200 trips to theaters, bowling alleys and other public places.