A true story from Associated Press,
Reported by Kurt Westervelt

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.

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.

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.

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