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COPYRIGHT 2004 Society for the Advancement of Education
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...
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