Decision comes more than 35 years after assassination attempt as judge says Hinckley, who wounded four, no longer poses threat to himself or others

John Hinckley Jr, the man who attempted to assassinate president Ronald Reagan in 1981, will be released from psychiatric care, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

The decision comes more than 35 years after the attempted assassination outside the Washington Hilton. Hinckley shot three others in the March 1981 incident, including the president’s press secretary and a US secret service agent, inspiring Reagan to push for stricter gun control laws after he left office.

On Wednesday, US district judge Paul Friedman wrote that Hinckley, 61, no longer poses a danger to himself or others and would be released as soon as 5 August. Hinckley will live full time with his mother in Williamsburg, Virginia, and must stay within a 50-mile radius of the town, Friedman said.

Hinckley will also be subject to several treatment and monitoring restrictions, which could be phased out after 12-18 months, according to the judge’s order.

These will include providing information about his cellphone and what cars he will be driving. He also will not be allowed to access social media, upload content to his computer or erase browsing history from his computer.

He has lived in St Elizabeth’s hospital since the shooting, but was granted temporary supervised visits with his family in the 1990s. Since 2013, he has spent 17 days a month at his mother’s home. The judge said Hinckley could be returned to the hospital if he violates the term of his “convalescent leave”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hinckley arrives at a court in 2003. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Reagan, his press secretary James Brady, the US secret service agent Tim McCarthy and the DC police officer Thomas Delahanty were all wounded in the shooting. Brady was left paralyzed from a shot in the head and died in 2014.

Reagan died in 2004, but his children, Ron Reagan Jr and Patti Reagan Davis, have all said they opposed Hinckley’s release.

After Hinckley’s arrest, it emerged that the assassination attempt was motivated by the hope of impressing actress Jodie Foster. He was infatuated with her and the role she had played in the 1976 film Taxi Driver.

Hinckley wrote several letters to Foster in the year leading up to the assassination attempt. He signed up for a writing class at Yale when he found out she was attending the school, and often dropped letters at her dorm. In one unsent letter he told Foster that he thought he would likely die in his attempt to kill Reagan, and professed his love for her.



Hinckley grew up in Dallas, the son of a wealthy oil executive, but he had difficulty holding down a job or staying focused in school.

Hinckley, who was 25 when he carried out the shooting, was found not guilty by reason of insanity at trial. On Wednesday his attorney, Barry W Levine, told the Washington Post that Hinckley is “profoundly sorry” about the shooting.

“Mr Hinckley recognizes that what he did was horrific. But it’s crucial to understand that what he did was not an act of evil. It was an act caused by mental illness,” Levine said. “He is profoundly sorry and he wishes he could take back that day, but he can’t. And he has lived for decades recognizing the pain he caused his victims, their families, and the nation.”

The assassination attempt reignited the debate on gun control in the US which was already heated following the assassination of John Lennon three months prior.

Reagan, an ardent supporter of the National Rifle Association, did not come out in support of gun control immediately after the shooting. Brady, however, became a leading gun control advocate after the incident.

Hinckley had bought the revolver used in the shooting five months prior to the assassination attempt at a pawn shop in Dallas. He was able to purchase the gun despite the fact that he was under psychiatric care and had been arrested on weapons charges four days prior at an airport in Nashville, Tennessee.

Brady and his wife, Sarah, worked on drafting what ater became known as the Brady bill after Hinckley’s assassination attempt, which included background checks and waiting periods for people attempting to buy a gun. In 1991, after Reagan left office, he came out in support of the bill, which passed in 1993. Three years later, Reagan also supported an assault weapons ban. His endorsements were thought to be instrumental in the passage of both bills; however, these restrictions have come to be widely rejected by current mainstream Republicans.

Many of the core tenets of the Brady bill were stripped by lobbying from the NRA in subsequent years, while the assault weapons ban was not renewed when it expired in 2004.