The Reagan Assassination Attempt

Just two months later, only sixty nine days into his term, on March 30, 1981, as Reagan was exiting the Washington Hilton Hotel after a speech, a gunman jumped out of the press gaggle and began firing shots with a $47 West German-made revolver. Wounded in the attack were President Reagan, his press secretary, James Brady, Secret Service officer Tim McCarthy, and policeman Thomas Delahanty. The shot that struck the president ricocheted off the presidential limousine, hitting Reagan as he was being pushed into the car. None of the victims of the attack died, although Brady, who was the most severely injured, would remain permanently impaired with brain damage and later become the symbol of the legislative movement to restrict the unfettered sales of handguns.

The twenty five years old suspect, John W. Hinckley Jr., was quickly apprehended. The entire attack was captured on multiple television and newsreel cameras. Hinckley was taken to District headquarters at 2:40 P.M. Hardly your typical assassin, he was the son of a wealthy Colorado businessman, who was acquainted with Vice President Bush. By 5:15 P.M. Hinckley had been taken to the FBI Washington Field Office and charged with violation of the federal presidential assassination statute. While the police waited to hear back from his lawyer, they asked Hinckley if he had a girlfriend. Hinckley replied that he was in a one sided relationship and produced the Yale dormitory number for eighteen year old actress Jodie Foster.

With the facts barely in dispute, and actual television footage of Hinckley firing the shots, his options were limited. The only way to go was to plead insanity. His lawyer, Vincent Fuller, would later write, "The case was challenging because it was so bizarre. A wealthy young man of Republican heritage, Hinckley tried to kill Ronald Reagan because he was in love with Jodie Foster." Under law going back centuries, the rule had been that to prove that the "insane" person could not tell the difference between right and wrong. However, research by Hinckley's lawyer team revealed that under an antiquated District of Columbia law, the prosecution had the burden of showing that an assailant was 'not' insane. The law stated that a defendant could not be held criminally responsible for his acts if at the time of the commission of the crime he could not, due to mental incapacity, "appreciate the wrongfulness of his act."

Although Fuller wrote articles in the aftermath of the case taking credit for developing the plan, he never completely believed it would work. At the beginning he had no confidence that there was standing for an insanity plea. Fuller wanted Hinckley to plead guilty to the charges. He asked Assistant Attorney General Rudolph Giuliani if the government would accept a plea agreement, with proviso that Hinckley be eligible for parole after ten years. Giuliani scoffed. "We don't negotiate with assassins," he said with an air of total finality.

Hinckley's lawyers were able to present a young man to the jury who was friendless, had a terrible sense of hopelessness, and was totally without the requisite mental capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct. Still, by the standards of most people, he wasn't totally insane. It was after he first saw the film 'Tarxi Driver', with Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster, Hinckley became obsessed with the movie, acting, dressing, and thinking like Travis Bickle, De Niro's character. Bickle plans a political assassination to win the love of a presidential campaign worker. After that does not succeed, he turns his attention to the Jodie Foster character, whom he rescues from prostitution after a fatal shootout with her pimp.

In the spring of 1977, Hinckley was still sane enough to return to Texas Tech. He then went to Yale to enroll in writing classes and to win the heart of Jodie Foster, who had just enrolled there as a freshman. Hinckley left Foster several letters and poems that were unanswered. Finally, to win her attention and love, he decided to shoot a president. It could have been a Democrat as a Republican. He bought some guns and stalked Jimmy Carter for a while in 1979, then on 1981, shot President Reagan.

It's safe to assume that had Hinckley been a black, nobody would have bought his story of his being crazy. In no other country in the world, probably not even France, could a person brazenly step before the television cameras and shoot the president of the United States, two law enforcement officers, and a presidential aide, and be found not guilty. Then again, no other country had a law firm like Williams & Connolly operating in it.

The story of the American system of justice is that if you have enough money and can afford a clever lawyer, anything is possible. Thus it was that on June 1982, a District of Columbia jury found Hinckley not guilty of the shooting by reason of insanity. He was sentenced to what has been a lifetime spent at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. Among those who seemed to agree with the verdict was President Reagan himself. He told television host Larry King that he forgave Hinckley and had "added him to my prayers." Reagan said he decided Hinckley could use some divine inspiration because "it was clear he wasn't thinking on all cylinders."

Jodie Foster would later win an Academy Award for playing an FBI agent who prosecutes an insane cannibalistic killer, Hannibal Lecter, in Silence of the Lambs. Lecter, who seems a lot nuttier than Hinckley, never made an insanity claim. In the movie, he seems to have no attorney at all, much less someone as clever as Hinckley's lawyers.


- <Masters Of The Game> Chapter 9 'Another Day, Another Dollar' by Kim Eisler





부시 대통령과 가까웠던 어느 재력가 집안의 아들이 한 영화배우를 흠모하며 계획된 레이건 암살 시도 사건의 전모가 너무나 드라마틱하다. 범인의 변호를 맡았던 법인은 수많은 공화당 핵심인사들과 친분이 두텁던 다름아닌 <Williams & Connolly>였고 (당시 로펌의 회장은 낸시 여사와의 개인적 친분 때문에 이 사건을 맡지 않으려고 상당히 고민했었다), 당시 사건을 총책임지던 부검찰총장이 후에 뉴욕 시장으로 선출된 Rudolph Giuliani 였다니, 희대의 사건답게 호화찬란한 올스타 캐스팅이다.


그래서 더욱 궁금하다. <양들의 침묵>의 Jodie Foster 캐스팅은 과연 어디까지가 의도적이었을까.