When U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in 2003 allowed John Hinckley Jr., the man who shot President Ronald Reagan, to take unsupervised trips out of a psychiatric hospital with his parents, the judge said the hate mail he received was serious enough that he and his wife briefly got extra protection from the U.S. Marshals Service.
But when Friedman in July granted Hinckley’s request to live full-time outside of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., he didn’t get as much “blowback” as he anticipated, he said. Thinking about it several months later, he said his 2003 decision opened a crack in the door and “there was no turning back unless [Hinckley] really screwed up.”
