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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   24386 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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Ethan Crumbley Parents Found Guilty of Manslaughter

Ethan Crumbley is a school shooter who killed four people. This does not make him unique. What makes him unique is that his parents have been found guilty of manslaughter for it. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/16/us/james-jennifer-crumbley-trials-differences/index.html

The legal theory is that the parents were extraordinarily negligent- and, TBH, at least the mom seems to have been a shitty parent who ignored her son's obvious mental illness- and provided a firearm to their son despite clear evidence he was at least a potential danger to others. I don't think this legal theory is particularly novel even if it's rarely used; when I took my CHL class in much more firearms-friendly Texas I was told that if I provided a minor with a handgun, I could be held liable should they kill someone with it. But on to some article quotes:

That witness overlap reflects how similar the two trials were overall. Both parents were convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter for their roles in their son’s mass shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan on November 30, 2021. They face up to 15 years in prison and are set to be sentenced next month.

Despite those similarities, the trials unfolded quite differently.

The case against Jennifer focused heavily on her personal life, digging into her voluminous text messages, her relationship with her son and even her extramarital affair. In contrast, the case against James largely avoided his private affairs but more closely examined how he secured the family’s firearms.

So his father was convicted under the idea that he had a positive responsibility to store firearms in a way inaccessible to a mentally ill teenaged boy. I'm not an expert on Michigan law, but I'm pretty sure that the letter of the law says something along those lines in most states, and it would be very difficult to argue that he doesn't have a moral responsibility. But maybe he was a responsible gun owner who took measures to keep his troubled son away from household guns that a reasonable person would expect to be sufficient:

In contrast, James Crumbley’s trial more closely focused on how he stored the three firearms in the home.

In August 2021, Ethan sent a video to his friend of him handling and loading a gun just after midnight. “My dad left it out so I thought. ‘Why not’ lol,” he wrote, according to messages shown in court. Both of his parents were at home around that time, forensic analyst Edward Wagrowski testified.

Further, James purchased the SIG Sauer 9mm firearm for his son on Black Friday 2021, and he later told investigators he hid it in a case in his armoire, with the bullets hidden in a different spot under some jeans. A detective said a cable lock sold with the SIG Sauer was found still in its plastic packaging.

Nevermind. While I'm leery of the precedent this sets for obvious reasons, I have no trouble acknowledging that James Crumbley deserves to go to prison and, were I a juror, I'd probably have voted to convict. On to the mom's case.

Another major difference between the two trials was that Jennifer provided a lengthy digital trail of her thoughts and feelings, while James did not. This contrast meant the jury heard more about her personal life than about his.

As revealed at her trial, Jennifer was in text conversations with several people before, during and after the shooting, providing a running commentary of her thoughts and actions.

She messaged her boss as she realized their gun was missing and her son was the shooter, then asked her boss not to fire her. “I need my job,” she wrote. “Please don’t judge me for what my son did.” Jennifer Crumbley appears in court on January 25 in Oxford, Michigan.

She texted the owner of a horse farm on the morning of the shooting that her son was “having a hard time” and “can’t be left alone,” and then later sent her reaction to the attack. “I wish we had warnings.. Something,” Jennifer Crumbley wrote.

She also messaged her extramarital lover after the shooting, reflecting on her own parenting skills. “I failed as a parent,” she wrote in a message. “I failed miserably.”

Other online posts of hers furthered the prosecution’s case. Days before the attack, she posted on her social media about her and Ethan’s trip to the gun range and his new SIG Sauer 9mm firearm. “Mom & son day testing out his new Xmas present,” she wrote in the post, alongside a photo of the gun.

Further, the day before the shooting, a teacher left Jennifer Crumbley a voicemail saying that her son had been looking at bullets on his phone in class. “Lol I’m not mad you have to learn not to get caught,” she wrote to her son in a text.

This does not paint a picture of good parenting. Furthermore,

The major difference in the trials was Jennifer Crumbley’s decision to testify in her own defense, while James Crumbley did not.

On the stand, Jennifer Crumbley pushed blame onto her son, her husband and the school, and she expressed no regret for her actions. “I’ve asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn’t have,” she testified.

James Crumbley, meanwhile, declined to testify. “It is my decision to remain silent,” he said in court.

The two decisions were a reflection of their broader legal defense strategies.

A pretrial ruling in Jennifer Crumbley’s trial had barred both sides from bringing up anything about her extramarital affair with a local firefighter. But midway through her trial, Jennifer waived the ruling and agreed to allow that evidence, saying she trusted her attorney’s recommended strategy change.

IANAL, but Jennifer Crumbley's legal defense strategy sounds sufficiently suboptimal that she seems to just have generally very bad judgement, maybe the mental illness runs in the family. That being said, I'm a lot less comfortable with the legal logic here- being a generally shitty parent who has bad judgement and neglects her son's mental health problem isn't illegal. I'm comfortable calling her a shitty parent and saying she should be called out for it but it kinda seems like a novel legal theory of the sort that's generally bad.

Personally I doubt this case will be widely replicated; the Crumbleys seem to have had much-more-damning-than-average facts. But let's go to the general principle; parents sometimes being held responsible when their minor child kills someone doesn't seem terribly controversial, no doubt had they left out a gun and their five year old killed someone using it to play cowboys and indians this would be a rare scenario but not a case that grabbed much attention. And it doesn't seem controversial either that Ethan Crumbley was sufficiently crazy to be less than 100% responsible for his actions. On the other hand, parents of teen murderers getting tried for manslaughter is definitely abnormal; teen murderers almost certainly suffer from distinctly below average parenting, too, although I would expect that in the median case that's due to a single mother's weird work schedule or poverty rather than a wealthy woman neglecting her kid. I think the difference is that these parents had, at least materially, the ability to do better. His mom obviously knew her son was showing signs of being crazy but preferred horses, extramarital affairs, and booze, his dad had a gun safe but didn't store the murder weapon in it(and when I was a teen with my own guns they were required to be stored in my dad's gun safe, which seems like the reasonable policy for your teen owning guns). This wasn't a single mom working a shift that made it hard to pay much attention to her kid, which is a lot closer to the family scenario for most minor criminals and for most mass shooters.

a teacher left Jennifer Crumbley a voicemail saying that her son had been looking at bullets on his phone in class. “Lol I’m not mad you have to learn not to get caught,” she wrote to her son in a text.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Looking up ammunition on your cell phone is completely normal behavior, and I do so occasionally to keep an eye on prices. If I was somehow back in school, where administrators and teachers are stupid and afraid of all things firearm related, then the correct advice is absolutely "learn not to get caught". Why is everyone under the impression that this text message is damning?

Totally agreed, this seems like it would be any supportive mom's reaction if their son was into guns. Posting about the range trip to facebook checks out, not getting worked up he was looking at bullets checks out... This might seem weird to people not in the hobby and not around guns at all, I suppose, but obviously you can't really look at this family's dynamics from that kind of framing.

I don’t think looking at ammo online is ipso facto unreasonable, but given the blue tribe paranoia about school shootings it seems trivially obvious that in class is a time and place that is at the very least highly inappropriate.

Do you believe taking your children to the gun range to target practice is unreasonable or bad parenting?

Taking your children to a gun range is GOOD parenting in a country with more guns than people and high homocide rates.

Do you want your kids to be raped and murdered for want of any ability to defend themselves from black crime?

No, I’m willing to bet that no one wants such a thing. If you think it’s a good rhetorical question, then you need a little time to cool off.

One day ban.

Well that's a crazy response

How do you mean?

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