Word: hinckley
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Hinckley survives a suicide...
This time, John Hinckley was resolved that a death would occur. He had failed to kill President Reagan on a Washington sidewalk last March, and he had failed to kill himself two months later, in a North Carolina prison, by taking an overdose of painkillers. In the stockade at Fort Meade, Md., last week, Hinckley jammed the lock to his cell with a piece of cracker-box cardboard. Then he stood on a chair, knotted one sleeve of an Army field jacket around his neck and the other to an iron window bar and, as U.S. marshals shouted...
According to Hinckley's parents, the suicide attempt was no surprise: they say they had warned federal authorities two days earlier that their son urgently needed counseling. Said an angry John Hinckley Sr.: "They told me it wasn't necessary, that it could wait. He has been constantly interrogated for seven months. Anyone would be desperate after going through all that." Replied a Justice official: "He is getting adequate [psychiatric] treatment...
...coincidence, two days after the suicide attempt, a federal district court ruled in favor of two Hinckley defense motions. Judge Barrington Parker said that the suspect's Constitutional rights were twice violated by the Government: first, Hinckley just after his arrest, when federal officials continued questioning him even after Hinckley asked for a lawyer, and again in July, when guards seized Hinckley's diaries from his cell. The illegally obtained evidence, Parker ruled, cannot be used to prove Hinckley guilty of the March shooting, the particulars of which the defense has already admitted. But Parker left unclear whether...
Despite such attitudes, observers believe that Hinckley Defense Attorney Vincent Fuller will parade his client's life and idiosyncracies before the jury in hopes of winning a shorter sentence, even if his insanity plea is rejected. Some feel, however, that Hinckley's wealthy background will count against him. Jurors, insists Washington Defense Attorney Lawrence Schwartz, will ask: "With all this opportunity, what right does he have to do this? " -By Bennett H. Beach. Reported by Evan Thomas/Washington