Suicide or murder???

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, the
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 deceased

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 deceased 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 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. 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 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.


Very tidy of him.

A true story from Associated Press.