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 Case:

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, "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.

In 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 u nloaded.
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,
if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation
turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son load ing 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 hat 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