A federal judge has said John Hinckley Jr, who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, can be freed from all remaining restrictions next year if he continues to follow those rules and remains mentally stable.

The US district court judge, Paul L Friedman, said in Washington during a 90-minute court hearing that he would issue his full ruling this week.

“If he hadn’t tried to kill the president, he would have been unconditionally released a long, long, long time ago,” Friedman said. “But everybody is comfortable now after all of the studies, all of the analysis and all of the interviews and all of the experience with Mr Hinckley.”

Friedman said the plan was to release Hinckley from all court supervision in June if he remains mentally stable and continues to follow the court-issued rules that were imposed after he left a Washington hospital in 2016 to live in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Since Hinckley, 66, moved to Williamsburg in 2016, court-imposed conditions have included doctors and therapists overseeing his psychiatric medication and deciding how often he attends individual and group therapy sessions.

Hinckley can’t have a gun and cannot contact Reagan’s children, other victims or their families, or the actor Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed at the time of the shooting in 1981.

Court-imposed restrictions also include monitoring Hinckley’s computer passwords.

His attorney, Barry Levine, asked for unconditional release, saying Hinckley no longer poses a threat. A 2020 violence risk assessment concluded that Hinckley would not pose a danger.

The US government opposed ending restrictions and retained an expert to determine whether Hinckley would pose a danger to himself or others. Findings from such an examination were not filed in court.

Hinckley was 25 when he shot and wounded the 40th president outside a Washington hotel. The shooting paralyzed Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who died in 2014. It also injured a secret service agent, Timothy McCarthy, and a Washington police officer, Thomas Delahanty.

Jurors decided Hinckley was suffering from acute psychosis and found him not guilty by reason of insanity, saying he needed treatment and not life in prison.