Strange but true legal story
Cut and pasted so please forgive all the >>>>>>>
>At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AFS
>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, "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 unloaded.
>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 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)
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by kracken
Social Networking Bookmarks