WASHINGTON

HINCKLEY SEEKS MORE TIME AWAY FROM PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

A lawyer for John Hinckley argued yesterday that his client is a changed man and ready to live part-time away from the mental hospital where he has been confined since shortly after his failed assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981.

Mr. Hinckley, 49, sat silently in a federal courtroom as a judge began hearing from psychiatrists and others who disagree over whether he is entirely well and can be trusted to spend days at a time off the hospital grounds. If U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman agrees, Mr. Hinckley will gain his greatest freedom yet.

“There is no evidence that Mr. Hinckley will be dangerous,” either to others or to himself, if allowed to live with his elderly parents for several days a month, lawyer Barry Levine told the judge. Federal prosecutors oppose plans for Mr. Hinckley to spend more time away from the facility. Greater freedom is an important part of Mr. Hinckley’s treatment, and should be encouraged if he responds well, psychiatrists and others told the judge. The government suggested yesterday that Mr. Hinckley is not as healthy and well adjusted as his doctors and advocates claim. Mr. Hinckley’s violent past is linked to his feelings about women, federal prosecutor Robert Chapman said. Mr. Hinckley was acquitted of the shootings in 1982 by reason of insanity. He has been in legal limbo ever since – no longer a criminal defendant, but still subject to court supervision.

– Associated Press

SOUTH

PARENTS CHALLENGE TEXTBOOK’S EVOLUTION DISCLAIMERS

ATLANTA – A trial opened yesterday over whether a warning sticker in suburban Atlanta biology textbooks that says evolution is “a theory, not a fact” violates the separation of church and state by promoting religion.

Cobb County schools put the disclaimers in biology texts two years ago after more than 2,000 parents complained the books presented evolution as fact without mentioning rival ideas about the origin of life, namely creationism.

A group of parents and the American Civil Liberties Union then filed a lawsuit over the stickers. “It’s like saying everything that follows this sticker isn’t true,” said Jeffrey Selman, a parent who filed the lawsuit.

A lawyer for the school district, Linwood Gunn, said the sticker was meant to “encourage critical thinking” and said it did not imply that evolution was wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creationism was a religious belief that could not be taught in public schools along with evolution.

– Associated Press

HEART PILL IS FIRST TARGETED TO A SPECIFIC RACE

NEW ORLEANS – A two-drug combination pill dramatically reduced deaths among blacks with heart failure, a landmark finding that is expected to lead to government approval of the first medication marketed for a specific race.

Black cardiologists hailed this form of racial profiling after years in which minorities got short shrift in medical studies. Others complained that the drug also might help whites and should have been tested in them, but wasn’t for business reasons.

The nationwide study is the largest ever done solely on blacks with heart failure. The findings were reported yesterday at an American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans and will be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The drug, called BiDil, will be up for Food and Drug Administration approval by the end of the year. Heart failure affects 5 million Americans, but blacks are 2 1/2 times more likely to develop it.

– Associated Press