The fact that Gaye had made multiple documented suicide attempts during his life: in Detroit in 1970, when Berry Gordy’s father stopped him from shooting himself. In Maui in 1979, when he reportedly ingested an ounce of cocaine. And four days before his death—on March 28, 1984—when he reportedly jumped from a moving car, sustaining minor injuries.
The fact that he gave his father a loaded gun and never asked for it back.
The fact that in a 1983 interview, Gaye had described himself as a manic-depressive who felt unloved.
The evidence that pushes toward a “no”—or at least toward “unknowable”—includes:
The reliability limitations of memoir recollection under acute stress.
The possibility that what family members interpreted as suicidal intent was simply the behavior of a very sick, very frightened man who had lost the capacity to navigate safely.
The physical reality of the fight: Gaye struck his father first, possibly in response to witnessing Gay Sr. berating Alberta. This could be understood as an impulsive act of protection toward his mother rather than a deliberate provocation.
The fact that we are attempting to read the interior state of a severely drug-addicted man in extreme psychological distress, through the accounts of people who were themselves in shock.
What can be said with reasonable confidence is this: By the final months of his life, Marvin Gaye was not living in a way consistent with wanting to continue. He was destroying his health. He had placed himself in the most dangerous domestic environment available to him. He had given a weapon to the man most likely to use it against him.