John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan and three other men in 1981, is now going to write books in order to pay up to $2.9 million to his victims.
Excuse me?
Did I miss something or isn't John Hinckley supposed to be nuts?
Isn't that why he was found not guilty of the shootings? Isn't that why he never went to prison? Isn't that why he is in a mental hospital today?
But now somebody is going to publish his work? And pay him millions of dollars to do it?
Don't blame greedy publishers, however. The people promoting this deal are three of Hinckley's victims.
James Brady, the anti-gun advocate who was Reagan's press secretary, Timothy McCarthy, who was a Secret Service agent, and Thomas Delahanty, who was a Washington cop, have banded together to form something called The Victims Compensation Trust Fund Inc.
And they will hire an agent to flog Hinckley's talents -- books, movies, rock 'n' roll songs, potholder manufacture, you name it -- in order to get paid back for their pain and suffering.
Nobody can say they haven't suffered. And nobody can say that victims don't deserve compensation from the guilty party.
But that's just it: John Hinckley is not guilty.
The law says so.
A jury found that he lacked the mental capacity to appreciate the criminality of what he was doing.
And if you don't know you are committing a crime, the jury said, you should not be punished for it.
So Hinckley is in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, not for punishment, but for cure.
According to the law, he must be viewed as an innocent man. A dangerous innocent man. A man who must be confined under guard, but an innocent man.
And make no mistake: The day John Hinckley is cured, he must be released.
Further, his doctors must try to cure him so he can be released. The Supreme Court has said you can't "warehouse" such people and leave them to rot just because society doesn't like them.
So why should John Hinckley have to pay anybody millions of dollars in damages?
If he has been found not guilty of shooting these people, how can he be made to pay them?
Well, the truth is that Hinckley knows that the law is never really going to treat him like an innocent man.
In 1989, Hinckley petitioned a federal court to let him talk to reporters.
After all, many terrible criminals give interviews to reporters all the time.
Charles Manson, convicted of seven murders, has been on TV so much, he's probably eligible for an Emmy by now.
And after John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 young men and boys and burying 29 of them beneath the floorboards of his home, was sentenced to death 33 times in 1980, I interviewed him. (He was executed last year, but only once.)
But when it came to Hinckley, the courts said no. No First Amendment rights for him. Even though he was not guilty of any crime.
U.S. District Judge June Green said that Hinckley's "very thirst for public attention which sparked this motion is the primary symptom of Mr. Hinckley's continued need for a carefully structured treatment."
In other words, the judge said the very fact that Hinckley wanted to talk to reporters and communicate with the public was a sign that he was still crazy.
So I wonder how Judge Green feels today.
Hinckley is now going to reach millions of people through book deals.
But why did Hinckley agree to give almost all of the money away to his victims?
Because it's still a good deal for him. He gets what he wants: Publicity.
Which is why he shot Reagan in the first place, remember. He wanted the publicity so he could impress Jodie Foster.
And, I guess, the courts are going to let him have the publicity this time.
Why?
Well, because we all want the victims to have the money.
And the memories of the shootings fade each year.
And, today, if you do something really terrible and don't write a book about it, you have to be nuts.