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 descender 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. When confronted with the murder charge the
old man and his wife were both adamant. They both said they thought the
shotgun was unloaded. Thed 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. 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.