Not even Law and Order would attempt
to capture this mess...This is an unbelievable
twist of fate!!!
At the 1994 annual awards dinner given
for Forensic Science, AAFS President Dr.
Don Harper Mills astounded his audience
with the legal complications of a bizarre
death. Here is the story:
On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner
viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded
that he died from a shotgun wound to the
head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of
a ten-storey building intending to commit
suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating
his despondency. As he fell past the ninth
floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun
blast passing through a window, which killed
him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the
deceased was aware that a safety net had
been installed just below the eighth floor
level to protect some building workers and
that Ronald Opus would not have been able
to complete his suicide the way he had planned.
"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued,
"Someone who sets out to commit suicide
and ultimately succeeds, even though the
mechanism might not be what he intended,
is still defined as committing suicide."
That Mr Opus was shot on the way to certain
death, but probably would not have been
successful because of the safety net, caused
the medical examiner to feel that he had
a homicide on his hands.
The room on the ninth floor, where the
shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by
an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing
vigorously and he was threatening her with
a shotgun. The man was so upset that when
he pulled the trigger he completely missed
his wife and the pellets went through the
window striking Mr Opus. When one intends
to kill subject "A" but kills
subject "B" in the attempt, one
is guilty of the murder of subject "B."
When confronted with the murder charge
the old man and his wife were both adamant
and both said that they thought the shotgun
was not loaded. The old man said it was
a long-standing habit to threaten his wife
with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention
to murder her. Therefore the killing of
Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that
is, assuming the gun had been accidentally
loaded.
The continuing investigation turned up
a witness who saw the old couple's son loading
the shotgun about six weeks prior to the
fatal accident. It transpired that the old
lady had cut off her son's financial support
and the son, knowing the propensity of his
father to use the shotgun threateningly,
loaded the gun with the expectation that
his father would shoot his mother. Since
the loader of the gun was aware of this,
he was guilty of the murder even though
he didn't actually pull the trigger.
The case now becomes one of murder on
the part of the son for the death of Ronald
Opus.
Now comes the exquisite twist.
Further investigation revealed that the
son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become
increasingly despondent over the failure
of his attempt to engineer his mother's
murder. This led him to jump off the ten-storey
building on March 23rd, only to be killed
by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth
story window. The son had actually murdered
himself so the medical examiner closed the
case as a suicide.
(true story from Associated Press,
Reported by Kurt Westervelt)
