Word: hinckleys
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...federal court's finding last week that John Warnock Hinckley Jr. was not gurity by reason of insanity of gunning down the president and three other 16 months ago must kindle the same questions. Imagine what the Soviets must think of us in the wake of the Hinckley acquittal. The same society that unceasingly berates them for external aggression itself refuses to punish a crime-attempted murder of the President-that almost anywhere else would be grounds for invocation of the death penalty...
That's one way looking at the Hinckley verdict...
...other way is to forget entirely about how the outside world is reacting. The Hinckley jury plainly did that. Unlike many celebrated murder trials, a not-guilty finding appealed to no constituency. There were none of the Southern racists who might have applauded the acquittal of James Earl Ray, none of the Rhode Island jet setters who would have loved to see Claus von Bulow go free...
People will shake their heads at the Hinckley jurors for the rest of their days. Except for the probable cheers of the American Civil Liberties Union, the dozen men and women who freed John Hinckley after four days of deliberations made no friends by pardoning his sins...
...once one abandons the initial shock at the unexpected decision the insanity defense of Hinckley's lawyers and psychiatrists seems well grounded in the Anglo-American justice tradition. That tradition punishes people for two reasons for crimes they knew they were committing, and for having had free will over the decision to commit the crime...