"The following is a TRUE story. 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 story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to that 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 descender was aware that a safety net had
been installed just below at 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, "a person 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, whence 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.
They both said they thought the shotgun was unloaded. Thed old man said it was
his 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, 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. 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 story
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."