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Forensic Science

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.