Up until the Hinckley case, what was the ruling in most of the insanity defense cases?
Generally those defenses were rejected by the jury. Sometimes either the person would be found not guilty by reason of insanity or the government would not challenge the insanity defense, but by and large it was not a successful defense. How long did you work on that case? I worked on it from March 1981, when the shootings took place, until June 1982. We were fortunate in that my colleagues on the case, Dick Chapman and Marc Tucker, and I were permitted to work full-time on it. We also had full-time investigators and a team of police and FBI people working on it; plus we were able to put together a very good team of psychiatrists to examine Hinckley and testify about him. We were up against Williams & Connolly. Vince Fuller and Greg Craig were lead counsel, so the case was litigated on a very high level. Both sides raised all of the issues that could have been raised. The judge in the case, Barrington Parker, basically permitted each side to put in as full a presentation as it wanted t
