At its 1994 annual
awards dinner of the American Association for Forensic Science (AAFS), its
President, Dr. Don Harper Mills, amused his audience with the legal
complications of a absurdly bizarre death. Here is the fictional story that
since then has ben circulated as a factual Associated Press Report:
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.
The room on the ninth floor, where the
shotgun blast had emanated from, 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 not loaded.
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, assuming 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, Ronald
Opus, had actually murdered himself.
So the medical examiner closed the case as a
suicide.
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