To the Obsessive Point

John Hinckley Jr. is a highly notorious offender who committed a very heinous act. In 1981 he managed to shoot U.S. President Ronald Reagan (Daniel). He also succeeded in shooting other members of Reagan’s staff that day. As egregious an act as this was, Hickley Jr.’s shooting became even more unusual when it was discovered that he had allegedly done it because of an infatuation with actress Jodie Foster. This fact motivated many who followed the case to initially believe that the shooter had a questionable mental status—both at the time of the shooting as well long before it occurred.

The resulting criminal case was greatly affected by the mental status of Hinckley Jr., which was adjudged to be at variance with that of the normal person. The defense presented several compelling pieces of evidence indicating that Hinckley Jr. was mentally unstable. The vast majority of them pertained to his unrequited infatuation with Foster. Hinckley Jr. is alleged to have developed an infatuation for the actress after watching her portray a prostitute in the film Taxi Driver (Coates). The film was released in 1976, a fact which the defense used to imply that the shooter had been obsessed with Foster for the better part of five years at the time of shooting the president.

What truly affected the outcome of the case was the plethora of written documentation Hinckley Jr. delivered to Foster. Most eminent among the letters he gave her was a note telling her he was going to attempt to murder the president in an attempt to impress her. This fact helped to convince the jury that he was mentally unstable. Subsequently, he was sentenced to multiple decades in a mental hospital.