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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.
It’s good for parents to have some fear that poor discipline on their part could possibly bite them in the ass. Sometimes children are just bad, in which case the authorities or healthcare system should be aware of the situation because an attempt at least should have been made to seek help.
But, in general, and barring extraordinary circumstances, parents are responsible for their children’s behavior under whatever age society deems appropriate for adulthood. They made him, they raised him, who else (other than the boy himself) could be more responsible?
I’ll agree that parents are responsible for their kids, and I’ll agree that in this case (as they bought the weapon and took him out target-shooting with it) they are responsible for enabling the shooting.
But I think as a blanket thing, I’m less convinced simply because preventing your kids, especially if they have ongoing mental health issues, from doing anything wrong is an impossible task. Once a kid has access to money and a vehicle, your ability to control them is pretty small. It would take an extreme level of helicopter parenting to prevent a teenager from doing this. He goes and steals a gun from somebody else, and you don’t know. He builds bombs out of household materials, and you don’t know. You’d have to track him to be sure, and watch his internet to be sure.
Worse, I fear that the looming threat of liability might make parents less likely to seek help. If you have your kid diagnosed with something like bipolar or borderline personality disorder or something that makes them more likely to be violent, you’ve now created a situation where you’re admitting possible guilt — you know your kid has issues, and if they act out, well, you knew about it. The best defense is that the child isn’t diagnosed with anything.
They bought him a gun knowing he was crazy and then chose to store it unlocked despite having two locking mechanisms- a gun safe and a trigger lock.
Seems like you're vindicating Maiq by holding this against them. If they had never seeked professional help, they could have argued that they didn't know he was crazy.
She was texting random associates that he wasn't OK, though.
Yes, and now there's an incentive to not tell your associates that you're worried about your kid, for the same reason.
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