President Reagan’s would-be-killer set to walk free after 35 years

United States: A US district judge on Wednesday passed orders to free the man who attempted to kill President Ronald Reagan in 1981. John Hinckley Jr. now aged 61, would get to walk out on August 5, to live with his mother for at least a year under supervision, before he could eventually live on his own.

Hinckley’s assassination attempt was an unsuccessful one but he managed to wound the US President and three others including the President’s press secretary, a policeman and a Secret Service agent. Hinckley was captured and tried. He resorted to the insanity defence, and a year later was found to be not guilty by reason of insanity.

Hinckley had become obsessed with Hollywood actress Jodie Foster and the Martin Scorsese film “Taxi Driver” in which she played a teenage prostitute.

Hinckley, a 25-year-old college dropout had vague aspirations of a musical career at the time of the attack on Reagan. He had become obsessed with Hollywood actress Jodie Foster and the Martin Scorsese film “Taxi Driver” in which she played a teenage prostitute.

Hinckley had apparently begun to identify with the film’s main character, Travis Bickle, who planned to assassinate a presidential candidate, and spent several years trying to make contact with Foster, who was a student at Yale University in Connecticut at that time. In an effort to win her over,

Hinckley wrote Foster a letter on March 30, 1981, detailing his plans to kill Reagan. Later that day, Hinckley approached Reagan and his aides outside the Washington Hilton Hotel and opened fire.

Reagan suffered a punctured lung but recovered relatively quickly. Brady died as a result of his wounds in 2014 and federal prosecutors said the following year they would not charge Hinckley with his murder.

The assassination attempt helped launch the modern gun control movement, as Brady and his wife, Sarah, founded what is now known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence after he was left permanently disabled.

The Hinckley verdict also led several states to rewrite their laws making it more difficult to use the insanity defense.

The Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump reacted to the judge’s verdict. Trump said “John Hinckley should not have been released.”