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At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association
for Forensic Science, AAFS president Don Harper Mills astounded his
audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death. Here
is the story:
On 23 March 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 indicating his despondency). As he fell past the
ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which
killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that
a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some
window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete
his suicide anyway because of this.
Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit
suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be
what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine
stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from
suicide to homicide.
But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful
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
and elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was
threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the
trigger, he completely missed his wife and pellets went through the window
striking 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 this charge, the old man and his wife were both
adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. 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 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 approximately six weeks prior to the fatal
incident. 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.
There was an exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that
the son, one Ronald Opus, 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 23, only to be killed by a shotgun
blast through a ninth story window.
The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
From: Karen
Hit me again!
Wil Stark,
wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com
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