Word: hinckleys
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After torturous deliberations, a jury acquits John Hinckley...
...first is that contrary to what Sen. Orrin Hatch (R. -Utah) and his conservative colleagues will insist, the Hinckley verdict is not an expansion of the rights of the accused. It is novel only because the insanity defense has never worked in such a widely publicized case. The verdict, however, only reaffirms the prior knowledge free will foundation of American law. John Hinckley's inevitable consignment to a mental home does not eliminate the distinction between legal treatment of the "loons" and the "goons." Only several weeks ago, convicted assassin Sirhan B. Sirham, the murderer of Robert F. Kennedy...
...insanity as in last week's case a jury implicitly argues at least one of those key reasons is absent. The truly insane may be unaware they are committing a capital offense. More frequently their disturbed mental conditions leave them with no apparent control over their actions. Whether John Hinckley was sufficiently mad as not to know or control what he did last March 30 is for experts to assess and for juries to decide, advised by those specialists in how people's minds work...
...Philadelphia radio the night of the Hinckley decision, an angry young "man in the street" was quoted as saying of the verdict: "...Yeah, and now [H.R.] Haldeman [a Nixon White House aide] is gonna be able to get a pardon by saying he committed Watergate for Jody Foster," Such analogies will be the Right's main ammunition in trying to use last week's decision to weaken controversial court practices that and defendants, like the exclusionary rule, which prohibits the use of illegally seized evidence in a trial. In defense of those liberal practices, it's worth observing two things...
...second observation is that any forced analogies the Right will make-like that of Hinckley to Haldeman-are preposterous. Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon offended us because Nixon evaded liability for his action by using his contacts within government, when a friendless outsider, a loser like Hinckley, is let off there is, at least, no collusion to abhor. Whether the jury last week correctly deemed Hinckley insane will always be a judgement call. But the fact that he could win his reprieve from a system whose participants were predisposed against him seems worth applauding for a moment...