Mae Lo Dee: November 2010

a true story.

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.

Thus 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 9th 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 8th 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 tocommit 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 9th 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 also 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 ofthe 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 RonaldOpus.

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 9th story window.

The son, Ronald Opus, had actually murdered himself. So the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

A true story from Associated Press

I wanted to search for murder pictures to match the story above but didn’t want it to be too gruesome so I typed ‘murder sketch’ and found this picture.

Doesn’t this picture just make you feel like crying? After all, who gives us the power to send people to execute others? Do you think that when the Bible tells us that Jesus forgave our sins he meant only those who steal, or lie, but left out the murderers?

Today in class, some of my classmates were talking about this guy who got imprisoned for I think 12 years should be killed instead. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew it was wrong. My thoughts went to the book that I just read, called ‘Taming the Tiger’.

‘Taming the Tiger’ is an autobiography (an autobiography is when you write about your own personal life) and the author (who is also the main character) was a dangerous criminal, and when he was caught and sent to jail, struggled with his sins and felt like he could never redeem himself. Until a pastor started visiting him in prison, finally after a few weeks, the author accepted Jesus into his life and found that all the weight of his sins were gone. Later on, he has a great testimony to share and brought many souls to Christ. Think what would have happened if someone had wanted to play god and decided to end his life?

Okay, enough, my thoughts have been expressed.