Murder or Suicide...???
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 Case:
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 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, "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.
In 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
unloaded.
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, if 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-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.
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