Hinckley and Chapman have their days in court
The whole world analyzed their perverted reach for infamy, which was precisely their point. As their lives were searched out in the glare of hideous celebrity, they became a matched pair, similar in age, appearance and murderous intent. Last week, almost in tandem, they had their days in court. In Washington, John Warnock Hinckley Jr., 26, pleaded not guilty to the attempted assassination of President Reagan. His lawyers were granted 30 days to plan a defense. In New York, Mark David Chapman, 26, pleaded guilty and was given 20 years to life for the murder of John Lennon.
Hinckley, the solitary third child of an oil-rich Colorado family, had spent the past few years idling through the Sunbelt, collecting guns, living on junk food, watching television. He became obsessed with Actress Jodie Foster, who starred in Taxi Driver, a movie about a loner who tries to shoot a presidential candidate. Hinckley wrote again and again to the unknowing Foster, the last time from Washington: "I will admit to you that the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you." Then he took a .22-cal. revolver and wounded Reagan, Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, Washington Policeman Thomas Delahanty and Press Secretary James Brady, who two weeks ago underwent a fourth major operation.
Since April, Hinckley has been given psychiatric examinations by the defense, the court and the prosecution. The Government, according to a lawyer familiar with the case, decided he was competent to stand trial and was probably sane when he shot Reagan. Hinckley and his lawyers now have 30 days to decide whether to plead not guilty by reason of insanity or to change his plea to guilty. He faces five terms of life imprisonment.
Chapman, the son of an Atlanta bank-loan collector, liked working with children, played in a high school band and idolized Lennon. He left his job as a Honolulu security guard and flew to New York with money borrowed from his Japanese wife. After getting Lennon's autograph, he killed his hero with four hollow .38-cal. bullets. He was arrested moments later, carrying a copy of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.
In June, Chapman, a born-again Christian, told the court that God had told him to plead guilty, and so he did, against the advice of his lawyers. At his sentencing last week, he announced a vow of silence and offered, as "my final spoken words," a passage from The Catcher in the Rye: "I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And, I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. . . I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all." Judge Dennis Edwards Jr. said he did not consider Chapman insane, noting that the crime was "carefully planned and executed." The judge did, however, recommend psychiatric treatment during his incarceration.