Peanut butter atrocity
THE American presidential election is turning really nasty.
A woman in Amherst Junction, Wisconsin, spread peanut butter on the cars of 30 Trump supporters after she had been ejected from a meeting, when she stormed in yelling about how much she hated Trump.
Unfortunately, according to the Huffington Post, she had found the wrong meeting. It was actually a gathering of conservationists.
The police were called and they noted slurred speech and “a strong smell of intoxicants” as the woman continued yelling about how she hated Trump and loved Hillary Clinton; also that peanut butter was better than the fire-bombing Trump wanted.
She was charged with disorderly conduct. As an officer remarked afterwards, at least the peanut butter was smooth and would not damage the paintwork on the cars the way whole-nut peanut butter would. mercidler@inl.co.za
Only a couple of weeks to go now.
Happy families
AN EXTRAORDINARY account comes this way of a murder in the US with strange legal complications, described at an awards dinner of the American Association for Forensic Science by association president Dr Don Harper Mills. It happened in 1994. Here is the story:
On March 23, 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he had died from a shotgun wound to the head.
Opus had jumped from the top of a 10-storey 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 deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth-floor level to protect some building workers.
Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.
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 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 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 before 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 Opus. But now the plot thickens. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Opus.
He had become increasingly