Word: hinckleys
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Senators were particularly anxious to clear up an inconsistency that cropped up at the Hinckley trial: Who bears the burden of proving the defendant was sane or insane? In federal cases, the prosecution must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the defendant was legally sane at the time of the crime. In many states, the defense must show, usually by a "preponderance" of evidence, that a suspect was insane in order to win acquittal. Judge Parker chose to use the stricter guidelines in order to avoid giving the defense technical grounds for appeal. This put the burden of proof...
...Drake, the forlorn letters Hinckley wrote offered insight. "It just seemed like he was a sick white boy looking for someone to love him," she recalls. They reread aloud the note Hinckley wrote to Jodie Foster on the day of the shooting. "There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan," he scribbled. Glynis Lassiter, 42, a janitor at American University, argued that Hinckley was clearly insane "if he felt he was going to get killed and then he goes ahead and does it anyway." Copelin strongly disagreed. "Look at this," she said...
...Saturday the jurors moved into the now empty courtroom for their longest, and most tense, day of deliberations. A debate flared over whether Hinckley's erratic cross-country travels showed him to be crazy. Said Copelin: "We went in our minds everywhere Hinckley went. When he flew, we flew. When his father met him at the airport and told him to go to the Y.M.C.A., and when he took the bus, we took the bus." They even tried to calculate how much all this cost the rich drifter. To Lassiter, the janitor, the aimless meanderings indicated a mental defect...
...Hinckley's twisted poetry also became a matter of dispute. Asked Blyther: "Could a sane person have written it? Obviously something is wrong with him." Drake, who said she likes to write too, disagreed. "This man is a writer and writers are strange. He is not stranger than they are because he was infatuated with Jodie Foster. He shot four people." The argument turned on whether poetry should be considered factual or if, as Prosecutor Roger Adelman had insisted during the trial, fictional. "Poetry is not fiction," Lassiter argued vehemently. They all tended to agree. To make sure, they...
...important event of Sunday came late in the evening when Dianne Ham, 33, went to Copelin's room to talk about switching foremen. They agreed that Jackson seemed uncomfortable in the position. In a nearby room, Lawrence Coffey was awake in bed coming to his own decision about Hinckley. "I lay there thinking about his letters to Jodie and to his parents," the burly hotel banquet assistant recalls. "I felt sure he wasn't in his right mind when he shot those people...