Six Shots at a Nation's Heart

April 13, 1981 TIME Cover: Moment of Madness
What Happened and Why Can It Never Be Stopped?

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supposed to do. It was like watching a training film."

He carried no press credentials, which accredited reporters and cameramen wear about their necks and are supposed to keep visible at all times. The Secret Service insists there was no intention to create a closed press area at the Hilton site. The spectators were not considered intruders. Why was not the presidential car parked directly in front of the exit, instead of 15 ft. away? The Service claimed that the positioning permitted a faster exit and was normal. "They are wrong," insists TIME Photographer Dirck Halstead. "I've covered that exit many times, and the President's car was always right in front of it."

Secret Service Chief H. Stuart Knight indirectly criticized the FBI for failing to inform the Service that Hinckley had been arrested at the Nashville airport for carrying three handguns in his briefcase on Oct. 9. On that day Jimmy Carter had been in the city to make a campaign speech at the Grand Ole Opry house. Yet there was no evidence that Hinckley had been tracking Carter.

Spirited into a helicopter at the Quantico base by FBI agents, who made him bend over and run, Hinckley late last week was flown to an Army post near Washington. There he was transferred to a limousine and brought in handcuffs to a federal courtroom under security so tight that even the clerk of court had to show identification. A paramedic with an oxygen tank sat behind Hinckley in the courtroom. A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. James L. Evans, testified that his three-hour examination of Hinckley showed he was "mentally competent to stand trial." District Court Chief Judge William B. Bryant ordered that the suspect be examined further to establish his men tal condition. Hinckley's family had hired the firm headed by Defense Attorney Ed ward Bennett Williams to represent their son; the lawyers argued that any such examination should be done first by defense-chosen experts. Bryant denied the request but assured defense attorneys that their psychiatrists would have "equal access" to Hinckley.

Finally John W. Hinckley Jr. was flown by helicopter to the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., where psychiatric examinations could take up to three months. The legal question may turn out to be whether he was sane at the time of the crime. The larger question for the U.S. was whether the course of its history must continue to be influenced by the mental misfits in its midst.