Subject: Fwd: Suicide...or Murder? with a Twist
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 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. Mr. Opus 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 decedent 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, 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.
The room on the ninth floor 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\' (under the doctrine of
"transferred intent"). 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.
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.
(A true story from Associated Press, reported by Kurt Westervelt)
