WASHINGTON (AP) – The man who shot President Ronald Reagan and three other people in 1981 won’t face new charges in the death last summer of Reagan’s former press secretary, federal prosecutors said Friday.
John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shootings of Reagan, his then-press secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a police officer. Hinckley, 59, has been committed to a psychiatric hospital for the past 32 years, although he now spends more than half of each month at his mother’s home in Virginia.
Brady was shot in the head and suffered debilitating injuries, including partial paralysis, and died in August at age 73. The Virginia medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide attributable to the gunshot wound and its complications. But new criminal charges against Hinckley were considered unlikely.
U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen announced Friday that Hinckley won’t be charged, in part because prosecutors are barred from arguing now that Hinckley was sane at the time of the shootings. A prosecution would also be precluded by law because District of Columbia courts before 1987 did not allow homicide cases to be brought if the victim died more than a year and a day after the injury.
The Brady family said in a written statement that it respects Machen’s decision.