Park Dietz - The John Hinckley, Jr., Trial

The John Hinckley, Jr., Trial

John W. Hinckley, Jr. attempted to assassinate President Reagan outside Washington, D.C.’s Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981, and Hinckley’s 1982 trial included Dietz as an expert prosecution witness (while he still was teaching at Harvard). In his five days of testimony, Dietz told the jury that Hinckley told him that he felt shooting the president accomplished his goal of trying to impress actress Jodie Foster. Dietz quoted Hinckley as saying, “ ‘Actually, I should feel good because I accomplished everything on a grand scale… I did it for her (Foster) sake…’ ”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Adelman, the chief prosecutor, argued that Hinckley may have been emotionally unstable at the time of the shooting, but that he was not so mentally disturbed that he could not understand what he did when he shot Reagan. Dietz and the colleagues whom he led wrote the prosecution’s 628-page report on Hinckley’s mental state.

Dietz diagnosed Hinckley with personality disorders: narcissistic, schizoid, and a mixed personality disorder with passive-aggressive and borderline traits, plus persistent sadness. Hinckley had, according to the Dietz-authored report, “a pattern of unstable relationships; an identity disturbance… chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom…inability to sustain consistent work behavior…lack of self-confidence.” But Dietz also told the jury that none of these personality issues made Hinckley legally irresponsible for shooting Reagan. “On March 30, 1981, Mr. Hinckley, as a result of mental disease or defect, did not lack substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct.”

Dietz used Hinckley’s assessment of the assassination location, as Reagan walked outside the Hilton Hotel, as an example of how Hinckley did, “appreciate the wrongfulness,” of his actions, but nonetheless went forward. Dietz said Hinckley had a, “long-standing interest in fame and assassination,” and that he had studied, “the publicity associated with various crimes.”

Hinckley’s mental health state was clear enough that he knew the type of bullet that would do the most damage, Dietz told the jury, plus the step-by-step movements needed to get close to Reagan on March 30th. “He was able to make other decisions on that date,” Dietz said. “He decided where to go for breakfast, what to eat…He made personal decisions of that sort….He deliberated and made a decision to survey the scene at the Hilton Hotel. There was no voice commanding him to do that…He decided, as he tells us, to go to the Hilton to check out the scene to see how close he could get.” He also explained that Hinckley summarized, “…the situation as having poor security…He saw that the range was close and within the distance with which he was accurate, and at the precise moment that he chose to draw his revolver there was a diversion of attention from him…The Secret Service and others in the presidential entourage looked the other way just he was pulling the gun…Finally, his decision to fire, thinking that others had seen him…indicates his awareness that others seeing him was significant because others recognized that what he was doing and about to do were wrong.”

Hinckley’s defense team argued that he was schizophrenic and thus not criminally responsible for his actions. After eight weeks of testimony, the jury on June 21, 1982 found Hinckley not guilty on all 13 counts by reason of insanity, a verdict that so shocked the nation that Senator Arlan Specter held a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee to question the jurors and both the American Psychiatric Association and American Bar Association appointed task forces to work on a revised test of insanity to clarify federal law.

The trial catapulted Dietz into the national spotlight: attorneys took special note of his unique knowledge of deviant behavior, with the FBI also seeking his expertise. His concurrent teaching at the University of Virginia from 1982 to 1988 ended with Dietz moving to Southern California to start his forensic consulting firm.