Francisco Martin Duran

Francisco Martin Duran (born September 8, 1968) is most known for his actions of October 29, 1994, when he fired 29 rounds from an SKS rifle at the White House. He was later convicted of attempting to assassinate United States President Bill Clinton and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Details

On Saturday October 29, 1994, dressed in a trench coat, Duran went up to the fence overlooking the north lawn of the White House and fired a 7.62×39mm SKS semi-automatic rifle (Chinese-made copy Type 56) at a group of men in dark business suits on the White House lawn. Two nearby boys claimed they had remarked aloud just before the shooting that one of the men looked like Clinton. Secret Service officers immediately began running across the lawn, guns drawn, when citizens Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis, and Robert Haines tackled Duran and pinned his arms until he could be subdued. Clinton was reportedly inside watching a football game at the time of the shooting and was unharmed. The incident followed just six weeks after Frank Eugene Corder crashed a Cessna into the White House south lawn and prompted debate about closing off traffic on that area of Pennsylvania Avenue. No one was harmed in the assassination attempt.

Trial

The most important charges in the two-week trial were attempted murder of the President and four counts of assaulting a federal officer (the Secret Service agents). Duran had served prison time previously, convicted of aggravated assault with a vehicle in the U.S. Army, and therefore, beyond the attempted murder of the President he was also charged with illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The other charges were use of an assault weapon during a crime of violence, destruction of U.S. property, and interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony.

Duran pleaded not guilty and mounted an insanity defense, claiming that he was trying to save the world by destroying an alien "mist", connected by an umbilical cord to an alien in the Colorado mountains. Prosecutors stated he was faking insanity and called more than 60 witnesses to testify that Duran hated government in general and President Clinton in particular. The jury deliberated for under five hours to reject the insanity defense and arrive at the guilty verdict.

As of 2013, Duran is serving his sentence at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution at Florence Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado. The Bureau of Prisons projects his release date to be the year 2029.