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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:
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:
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.
This does not paint a picture of good parenting. Furthermore,
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.
This is a miscarriage of justice in my opinion. If Ethan Crumbley had run over 4 people with the family car, would the parents have been prosecuted for leaving the keys on the counter? The parents didn't shoot anybody. A school shooting is not a reasonably foreseeable outcome of storing unsecured weapons in the house. Its hard to say that the Crumbley parents didn't do anything wrong, but its a stretch to say that they caused the death of those 4 people, in a way that they should be feloniously liable for.
If that is overreach then a lot of our justice system has the same issues. You can be tried for murder just for being the getaway driver, you can be tried for murdering if the gang you put together does it on your watch, you can be tried for murder for talking about murder on the phone with someone who goes on to murder. There are 10 different ways you can be tried for a murder you didn't take a physical role in. This is not a novel legal concept.
But at least in the case of a getaway driver, the driver absolutely knows and is an active participant in the murder. He knows he’s driving someone to a place where they fully intend to shoot someone, and they know after the fact they will be helping them escape. If an adult I share an apartment with takes my car keys and drives to someone’s house and shoots them, I’m not involved. I had no reason to think that a crime would result from me leaving the keys on the counter.
They don't know any of that. Probably they have a great record of robbing without killing anyone, almost no criminals are arrested for their first crime, or even their 30th. Then one time it happens and boom they are on the hook for murder 1. You can probably buy a gun for a million kids and most won't go on to murder someone with it. Being from a hunting family I received a gun much younger, and I didn't kill anyone.
These parents fucked up hard, and they should be punished. It is their responsibility to society and to humans everywhere to not let this happen. Let this be a lesson.
It’s unreasonable to hold someone responsible for choices that other people make unless they’re knowingly making choices that a reasonable individual would see an enabling a crime. If I leave my keys on the counter, that’s not participating in the roommate using my car to drive to his girlfriend’s house and shoot her. If I know he’s going to get her in some way and I knowingly give him the keys, sure I get that. Any person watching would interpret that as me giving the guy the keys to go harm his girlfriend.
I think it has to go through that reasonable man test. If a reasonable person looks at the situation and says that the parents knew or reasonably should have known that he wanted to kill people, and they knowingly provide him a weapon and ammo and refuse to secure it, yes, they’re involved. But if it’s “there are guns in the house,” not really. And especially if the kid gets into a safe or something, at that point, they’ve done everything reasonably doable to keep the kid from getting a gun.
The problem with "reasonable man" tests is they get evaluated in retrospect. It's easy to rationalize that a "reasonable man" would have acted differently if you know how things turned out.
Aren’t most of us doing this now? I mean most people are assuming that this was negligent simply because a shooting occurred. But my contention is outside of buying a troubled teen a gun and taking him to gun ranges to practice with it (which is negligent) a lot of the things they did would not be that unusual for a family that owns guns. And I think that matters because you shouldn’t be able to convict someone of not taking extraordinary measures to prevent a crime.
Yes, that's my point. These "reasonable man" tests are presented as a way of softening a Draconian-appearing rule such as "if you buy a gun for your child, you're responsible for any murders he commits" or even "if you have a child you're responsible for any murders he commits". The problem is the "reasonable man" test only gets applied when something bad has already happened, and the reasoning of "if something bad happened, the parenting must have been unreasonable" is irresistible to juries. And thus people learn that if you don't want to risk going to jail for murder you just don't buy your kid a gun full stop -- or you just don't have a child.
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