Word: hinckleys
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...John Hinckley's bullets seemed to hit dangerously close to the heart of a nation, his acquittal struck explosively at its sense of moral righteousness. Said Bell County, Texas, District Attorney Arthur Eads: "Only in the U.S. can a man try to assassinate the leader of the country in front of 125 million people and be found not guilty." That fact, insisted well-known Wyoming Trial Lawyer Gerry Spence, proves "we're a people of law and compassion." But most Americans agreed with Eads that the verdict was symptomatic of runaway leniency in the system. A nationwide poll...
...focus of most of the outrage was the insanity defense (see following story). "It's the system which found him innocent that's insane," editorialized Hinckley's home-town newspaper, the Denver Post. California Governor Jerry Brown denounced "a legal system that totally disregards the issue of guilt or innocence and instead relies on so-called psychiatric experts to tell us whether a man who committed a deliberate attack should be acquitted because he watched too many movies." On Capitol Hill, shock at the verdict was quickly translated into pressure for legislation. "This case demonstrates there...
...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...