Only in America!!

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Only in America!!
AbuKhaled
08/22/00 at 13:54:53
Americans? Why do they let themselves have guns?

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. The decedent 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 decedent 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 is 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 nine stories below at street level, but that his suicide attempt 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.

An elderly man and his wife occupied the room on the ninth floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated. 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 bullets 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. The 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 bizarre 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.)
Re: Only in America!!
bhaloo
08/22/00 at 14:48:10
Asalaam alaikum wrt wb,

Yes, a bizarre case indeed, I heard the story before.
Re: Only in America!!
Moe
08/24/00 at 01:27:57
thats bizzare


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