Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

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 10-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.

Dr. Mills continued, " Ordinarily, 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 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 10-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.