Forensic science award (Long)

[Peg]

I got this e mail tonight and found it pretty interesting.



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

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, Ronald Opus, had actually

murdered himself. So the medical examiner closed the

case as a suicide.

Alfred Hitchcock would have loved this!

[BabyRider]

Peg that is about the craziest thing I've ever heard! What a great twist! I love stories like that! (How morbid, huh?)

[Jika]

They say "truth is stranger than fiction"

You couldn't hope to write a script like that and if you did people would likely say, " How ridiculous, how far-fetched."

[Bothwell]

Fantastic

[john8pies]

Peg, I`ve heard that one before actually and yet it still amazes me!

[sooz]

I'm really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is one of those urban myths!



http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/opus.htm