Strange but true

This story was actually told to our academy class...

Suicide vs Homicide

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 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.

"Ordinarily," Dr Mills continued, "someone 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, where 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 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 had actually murdered himself so the medical examiner closed the
case as a suicide.

A true story from Associated Press, Reported by Kurt Westervelt

Crazy story man! Totally worth reading. Its funny how you read about crazy things like that. The weird thing is that since there is 6 billion people on earth, things like that happen all the time.

Interesting

wow thats crazy

man this was so freaking crazy i think that would happen to me

Sorry, I don't buy it.

Interesting story!

I didn't either at first Neo. Then our instructor showed us images of the crime scene and all the media the story drew up. It was more or less a challenge that one of our homicide detectives gave us to see what we would classify the crime as.

"NeoVikesTX" wrote:

Quote:

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Sorry, I don't buy it.

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You must be the guy who watches "Ripley's believe it or not" and argues that its all fake. Just role with the story man, dont pee on it.... :rr:

Totally Wacky!!!