John Hinckley: the judge should have just said "no"

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 2004 by Richard E. Vatz

U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE Paul L. Friedman has ruled that John W. Hinckley may take short, unsupervised--at least by the state or any other official organ--trips around Washington, D.C. This rifling comes after 21 years of Hinckley's not being allowed to leave the grounds of the hospital in which he was incarcerated some time after shooting Pres. Ronald Reagan and others in 1981. The only stipulations, according to The Washington Post, are that Hinckley's parents must be with him at all times and notify the judge and local authorities if there is any "hint" of trouble. It is unclear who gets to define "hint." Hinckley's parents also must carry a cell phone, and Hinckley himself must avoid contact with Leslie DeVeau, a (former?) girlfriend who killed her 10-year-old child and similarly was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Thus, this would-be assassin finally has succeeded in his latest attempt to secure unsupervised leaves from St. Elizabeth's Hospital. His attorneys argued that his menial health had improved over the 20-plus years he has been incarcerated and that such leaves would constitute a "critical component" of his treatment.

The appropriate response to the psychobabbling argument that such releases would have a salutary effect on Hinckley's treatment is provided by Reagan's daughter Patti Davis' rhetorical question posed in a poignant essay in Newsweek's Web Exclusive: "Who cares?"

That is to say, concern regarding Hinckley's treatment, even if such excursions would have a "positive therapeutic effect," is a relatively unimportant issue. What is more relevant is the safety of innocent citizens and the sensitivities of those who loved the ex-president and those who care about the permanently injured former Reagan press secretary, James Brady, as well as the other victims and threatened individuals of the 1981 assassination attempt, such as actress Jodie Foster. The Bradys, as a matter of policy, do not comment on such Hinckley matters, but Reagan's family consistently has opposed such unsupervised releases, which, one should note, are the step just prior to permanent release.

Even if the only issue was the safety of citizens, the request should have been rejected. Various studies have shown that psychiatrists are wrong far more often than they are correct in predicting who will he violent and who will not. This is not surprising. Only if one believed psychiatry's self-serving rhetoric would one surmise that it actually constitutes a "science of human behavior," as psychiatrists and psychologists often maintain.

As simple as it seems, psychiatrists often are motivated to support the release of dangerous perpetrators because the doctors believe that is the sine qua non of psychiatry--healing the "sick." In such cases when an individual is emancipated from psychiatric custody, it represents a success story for the psychiatrist or psychiatrists who effect the discharge.

The fact is, no one knows if violent patients will be violent when set free: the best bet is that they well may be, but an incorrect prediction poses no threat to those who put them back into society. There is little risk to the psychiatrist, for if the individual does become violent, it is rarely, if ever, the case that attending psychiatrists are the chosen victims. Finally, statistics ell the violence of "insanity" acquittees can, by definition, include only the violence which is discovered or prosecuted.

This is not the first time that Hinckley has requested freedom. In 1987, he wanted permission to visit his parents. A year earlier, he had sought the address of cult killer Charles Manson and he has corresponded with mass murderer Ted Bundy. Moreover, previous attempts have elicited information from his psychiatrists that he has had an obsession with violent books (about which his longtime attorney Barry Levine lamely maintains, "books aren't weapons") and that he once made attempts to secure a .38 special (one supposes that weapons are weapons).

The general arrogance of judges and psychiatrists who grease the way for unsupervised release and/or permanent release of violent offenders--insane and sane--simply is indefensible. Columnist Mike Royko argued sardonically years ago that psychiatrists and judges who effect the early liberation of violent criminals should be required to have those individuals live with them and their families. That would eliminate decisionmakers' distance from the consequences of their dangerous, whimsical social experiments.

In 1997, U.S. District Judge June L. Green denied unsupervised leaves for Hinckley, declaring that he "has deceived those treating him in ways too numerous to recount" and still may be dangerous.

Yet, on a talk show earlier this year on Wisconsin's National Public Radio affiliate, sever al callers insisted that the decision--allowing Hinckley to leave the grounds of St. Elizabeth's unsupervised for the first time in over two decades--was reasonable because that is what the law demands. One is tempted to quote novelist Charles Dickens' Mr. Bumble: "If the law supposes that, the law is an ass." Regardless, many people are so mystified by psychiatry and the law that they do not realize that the current Hinckley decision is wrongheaded and irresponsible.