Hearing Focuses On Hinckley's Ties to Women

The amorous or not-so-amorous intentions of John W. Hinckley Jr. have been debated and dissected for days by doctors and lawyers appearing before the judge considering the fate of the man who shot President Ronald Reagan.

Found not guilty by reason of insanity, Hinckley, 50, has been committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital since his acquittal more than two decades ago. But as his mental illness has stabilized, he has been allowed short excursions from the psychiatric facility in Southeast Washington.

Now, in a court hearing expected to conclude today, Hinckley is seeking more freedom: He wants to see his parents more by making overnight trips to their home, outside the Washington area. And, according to testimony, he wants to meet women, perhaps at singles events, and maybe even find a wife.

"I know he's hopeful . . . that he can find a woman to be with," said Raymond F. Patterson, a psychiatrist who has known Hinckley for two decades and who examined him this summer for the government.

Hinckley's thoughts about and encounters with women have been the focus of the hearing, from the "delusional" longings for actress Jodie Foster that led him to open fire on Reagan to the "personal spark" that he sensed last year with a young psychology student at St. Elizabeths.

Hinckley was an aimless college dropout when he came to Washington and shot Reagan and three others in March 1981. On the day of the shootings, authorities found an unmailed letter to Foster in the hotel room where Hinckley was staying. "Jodie," the letter said, "I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you, whether it be in total obscurity or whatever."

At the time, Foster was a student at Yale University. In the months before the shooting, Hinckley traveled 10 times to New Haven, Conn., where Foster was living, telephoned her dormitory room six times, left love letters for her and made tapes of himself playing the guitar and singing love songs.

Hinckley has been found to suffer from major depression, a psychotic disorder and narcissistic personality disorder, but he is by all accounts much improved. His depression and psychosis are in remission, and the narcissistic disorder is significantly "attenuated," doctors say.

But how ready is Hinckley to venture a bit more into the real world and into the ups and downs of romance and rejection? It was the question on everyone's mind during three days of hearings last week in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, who has overseen the case since 2001.

On one side were Hinckley's attorneys, led by Barry Wm. Levine, who tried at almost every turn to minimize the psychiatric significance of his client's interest in women, emphasizing instead the progress he has made for years.

Opposite Levine were Justice Department lawyers Thomas E. Zeno and Sarah T. Chasson, just as dogged in their efforts to depict Hinckley's recent encounters with women as evidence of a suitor still prone to dangerously misreading the women he meets.

Each side offered a parade of expert testimony. The assessments were often conflicting, depending on whether the witness was called by the defense or the prosecution. There was little middle ground. The experts ceded little -- or, in the case of Hinckley's therapist -- nothing to the other side.