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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. The decedent 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 decedent 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
nine stories below at street level, but that his suicide attempt
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 from 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 bullets 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. The 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 bizarre 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. Very tidy of him. A true story from Associated
Press, by Kurt Westervel)
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