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

Wil Stark, wstark04 (at) pobox _dot_com

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