Getting Over It -- John Hinckley and Another Guy

In a story that certainly doesn't appear to be getting much in the way of headlines, John Hinckley, Jr., the attempted assassin who shot several people in 1981 including Ronald Reagan, is the subject of some legal processes this week.  His lawyers and government lawyers are negotiating terms of an agreement under which he can live outside of the mental facility he has been assigned to for over 30 years.

I remember the date quite well, as the night before, which was Easter, my wife went into labor with our second and last child; he would be born the next day, the 30th of March 1981.  We spent our first day in the hospital with our son watching the TV reporting of President Reagan's condition, surgery, the condition of the others who had been wounded, and praying for their recovery.  In those grand, Twitterless days, we relied on network TV to give us the facts, and waited for them to correct their own errors hours later.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

Digression aside, let us return to Mr. Hinckley.  He is 60 now, but back in 1981 he was a young man with what was diagnosed by psychiatrists as some type of personality disorder.  Trying to get the attention of the actress Jodie Foster (in what turned out to be a terribly misdirected affection), he fired at the group including the president, thinking it would give him a platform to declare his feelings for her.

As you recall, or can look up on Wikipedia (which also did not exist then, nor did PCs to any extent, or laptops, or wireless, or the Web), Hinckley was charged with various crimes but was ultimately found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was remanded to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for treatment after being released from prison custody.

Now, I don't have much use for the "not guilty by reason of insanity" verdict and wrote a few months ago on the subject.  But that's what it was for Hinckley and that's where we are now.  So 34 years after a young man with psychiatric issues tried to kill the president of the United States, he is probably going to be released from living primarily at a mental treatment facility.

Have we forgiven him?

That's really the question at hand.  My gut reaction is to applaud efforts to keep him confined, principally because anyone who tries to kill someone else, let alone the president, ought to be put away.  In Hinckley's case, if his punishment has to be lifetime institutionalization rather than incarceration, well, so be it.  Crimes are to be punished, not treated, at least that's my gut reaction.

The more I think about it, the less I care, and the more I would like to rely on the professionals treating him to decide whether or not there is a shred of residual threat -- at least I would if I trusted psychiatrists all that much.  If they all agree that he is not likely to try to impress Jodie Foster any more, then OK, let him out, maybe check in with him once in a while.

What I don't know because, at least at the publication date of the article I referenced, there were zero comments, is what the nation thinks.  Anyone?  Bueller?   Bueller?

I do indeed care, because I'm looking for hypocrisy, as usual.  I went back to some earlier articles about Hinckley but wasn't really able to glean whether liberals or conservatives were more or less likely to want Hinckley locked up for good based on their own political leaning.  So, with every effort to avoid this becoming a strawman, here is my point of comparison.

He committed an act a number of years ago that is universally condemned.  He is much older now than he was at the time of the incident, especially relative to the state of his development and maturation since.  His victims have either forgiven him or have long since moved on, especially relative to the incident and their association of him with it.  His actions at that time do not reflect the person he now is.  There is almost no likelihood or expectation of him committing it again.

At this point, you can easily be thinking that the italicized paragraph above was a summary of the situation regarding the aforementioned John Hinckley, Jr., all of it being obviously an accurate description of him and his status.  But it isn't.

I'm talking about Josh Duggar.

Yes, all the above is every bit as legitimately said in regard to the eldest child of the 19 Kids and Counting family, as it is to John Hinckley.  May we please, each of us, look into our hearts and decide where we innately come down on whether:
(A) John Hinckley, Jr., now 60, should be given his release from residing at a mental treatment facility and allowed to live a normal life; and
(B) Josh Duggar, long past his early teens, should be given back his job, apologized to by the press, and allowed to live a normal life.

What we appear to be told is that Hinckley is no longer a threat to anyone, he has grown out of, or been treated out of, his illness and we are prepared to accept that as the truth.  We are also told that since the age of at least 16, Josh Duggar has not made improper actions toward girls, and in his entire adulthood he has behaved perfectly normally, and we are prepared to accept that as the truth.

So tell me if your feelings on this, whether you are liberal or conservative, are different relative to the two men.  I haven't been able to find enough data to see whether, say, the same people who would like to see Hinckley jailed forever are quick to give Duggar a pass.  I haven't been able to tell whether those who got their ear lobes in a knot about Josh Duggar are ready to forgive and forget as far as Hinckley is concerned.

It's just that the more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with a moral stance that doesn't treat the two situations pretty much the same way.  The arguments for feeling one way or the other toward one of the two play pretty strongly toward the other guy.

I guess I'm one of those who figured that, while what Josh Duggar did as a teenager was pretty bad, he grew out of it and no longer needs to be defined by it or repeatedly punished for it.  So if that's the case, then John Hinckley, if he has grown out of the disturbed person he was in his 20s, and specifically given that he does not have a conviction to deal with, should get the same view from me.

I still think he should have been judged "guilty by reason of insanity" and his treatment assigned to the state (or District in this case), but I guess I have to be morally consistent and equally willing to concede the possibility of his having long since grown out of his issues.

Moral consistency ... perhaps a platform plank for someone in 2016.  Bueller?

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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