Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter
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And now, prosecutors are criminally charging Crumbley’s parents with manslaughter.
To be sure, the parents appear to have been utterly irresponsible. According to the charges filed, in the hours before the shooting they had been urgently summoned to the school, because a teacher had discovered that Crumbley had drawn images of a gun that had been fired at a fallen body, with the added inscriptions, “Blood everywhere” and “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
Furthermore, on the day before the shooting, Jennifer Crumbley had sent her son a text — a blood-curdling one in hindsight — laughing off the fact that a teacher had seen her son searching online for gun ammunition: “LOL, I’m not mad at you, you just have to learn not to get caught.” The parents left the gun — a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer pistol that had just been lawfully purchased by James Crumbley — unlocked in a bedroom drawer.
To say this reflects appalling judgment is an understatement. But let’s take a breath and grasp the legal context.
Several states have so-called CAP (child-access prevention) laws that make it a crime for adults to allow children to have unsupervised access to firearms. Such laws have repeatedly been proposed in Michigan, but the legislature has opted not to enact them. Moreover, while prosecutors insisted, in announcing their involuntary-manslaughter charges, that the pistol should have been locked away, with a safety mechanism clipped in place and the ammunition kept separate, there is no such mandate in state law. And, the passion of anti-gun advocates notwithstanding, if such a law were enacted it would face stiff constitutional challenges.
Now, with the legislature having refused to criminalize the conduct in which the Crumbley parents engaged, the prosecutors — whose actual job is to enforce the legislature’s laws — are attempting in the heat of the moment to criminalize the conduct themselves.
It is one thing to say that the parents were egregiously derelict — just as, for example, store owners are egregiously derelict when they sell to suspicious characters substances (including explosive powders) that can be used to make bombs. But that does not make the parents’ conduct a criminal violation, much less make them responsible for homicide — a much more serious crime, even in the form of involuntary manslaughter, than the CAP crime that Michigan has refused to codify.
The Crumbley parents may be looking at significant civil liability, and deservedly so. But we are not supposed to make criminal law by having prosecutors concoct it on the fly. We should particularly resist prosecutorial creativity in the immediate aftermath of an emotionally charged tragedy such as this one. And when legislatures do codify a crime, it should be calibrated to the wrong actually done by the action or omission, not to the horrific downstream consequences. What happened at Oxford High School may have been foreseeable in some abstract sense, but it was certainly not foreseen in concrete reality.
There is already enough tragedy here. Distorting the law to make it fit our sense of outrage can only make matters immeasurably worse in the long run.
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@89th said in Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter:
the minor's ability to access
That's what they're claiming, along with the kid's history, etc.
By the way, there are many of us who have had issues with kids and family who, now, look at the sky and say, "Thank goodness. There, but for the grace of God, go I."
@george-k said in Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter:
By the way, there are many of us who have had issues with kids and family who, now, look at the sky and say, "Thank goodness. There, but for the grace of God, go I."
That's undoubtedly true, but legal questions aside, you have to wonder what the hell parents were thinking acting like they did.
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And to beat a dead horse...There is a reason we went decades or maybe centuries without these mass shootings at schools.
If not violent video games and the isolation of social media, then why?
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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Are they still on the lam?
They’ll end up, after a lot of drama, with the same formula they use every time they have a trifecta: take away health care and food assistance from low income families and use the money to fund tax cuts for their donors.
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And to beat a dead horse...There is a reason we went decades or maybe centuries without these mass shootings at schools.
If not violent video games and the isolation of social media, then why?
@jolly said in Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter:
If not violent video games and the isolation of social media, then why?
- Those are far from the only two differences between the time in which these events were not commonplace and today.
- Study after study has shown that violent video games are a symptom of potentially dangerous behavior, but not a cause.
- What you're suggesting also implies that your distinction between what constitutes a video game from a violent video game perfectly tracks with all reported outcomes of exposure to either set, which is pretty lofty.
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Very interesting case. At what point do the parent’s actions become criminal?
It seems like the mom knew he was drawing violent pictures at school. Maybe that’s not enough, but what if he started naming specific people in his drawings and she turned a blind eye to that?
At what point does the child’s behaviors cross the line and it’s no longer reasonable for the parents to ignore it / enable it.
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I don’t know enough about Michigan law to have an informed opinion on whether the criminal charges against them are reasonable.
But there’s no question that they are capital-F fucked in civil court. For the rest of their lives all of their assets and all of their disposable income will go to the victims families.
Fleeing justice probably was a bad idea and may lead to its own charges.
(They were apprehended “in a building” after police received a tip overnight)
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@jon-nyc said in Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter:
Are they still on the lam?
Michigan shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley's parents arrested in Detroit after manhunt
The parents of Michigan school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley were taken into custody in Saturday's predawn hours after an extensive manhunt for the couple, who had failed to appear for their arraignment Friday.
James and Jennifer Crumbley face involuntary manslaughter charges in connection to Tuesday's tragedy at Oxford High School for refusing to take their son out of school after staff said he exhibited warning signs of violence and needed counseling, according to authorities.
Ethan Crumbley, 15, was arrested after he allegedly opened fire at the school, killing four students and wounding seven other people.
Following an hours-long search in Michigan on Friday that included U.S. Marshals' offers of $10,000 rewards each for their capture, law enforcement officers found the parents in Detroit, where they were reportedly hiding in an art studio after leaving their car in the building's parking lot.
A business owner called 911 after seeing the suspects’ car and noticing a woman running away from it. Images of the car and the couple had been posted in the media.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/michigan-shooting-suspect-ethan-crumbley-parents-arrested-detroit-manhunt
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The fact that she texted “don’t do it” to her son when she heard there was an active shooter speaks volumes.
They’ll end up, after a lot of drama, with the same formula they use every time they have a trifecta: take away health care and food assistance from low income families and use the money to fund tax cuts for their donors.
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And to beat a dead horse...There is a reason we went decades or maybe centuries without these mass shootings at schools.
If not violent video games and the isolation of social media, then why?
@jolly said in Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter:
If not violent video games and the isolation of social media, then why?
IMO, the primary fuel for the fire is the media coverage, ever since Columbine in 1999. I've said it a million times, the news loves school shootings. No individual reporter will tell you that, but their 24/7 coverage with special logos/intros with dramatic music... So when kids who are troubled realize their actions will get national coverage, including their name, face, reason, etc... it adds a bit of a reminder that this is an option for them.
Other factors for sure, including social media... but the access to guns has not changed so IMO guns are not a reason for the increase in school shootings over the last 20 years.
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The fact that she texted “don’t do it” to her son when she heard there was an active shooter speaks volumes.
@jon-nyc said in Crumbley's parents charged with involuntary manslaughter:
The fact that she texted “don’t do it” to her son when she heard there was an active shooter speaks volumes.
Agreed. Thanks for posting that timeline, that is what I was hearing yesterday... the whole picture with guns, blood, make the thoughts stop... it's almost like that's a stereotype of what teachers should look for. Talk about a textbook case of identifying the threat early.
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I think the "don't get caught" comment was directed to him regarding what he was looking at on his cellphone in class. If he had been looking at something not related to the shooting (porn?) I can almost, almost, see that admonishment.
But, he was looking at ammo. It's another piece, but I believe a small one in the whole cascade.
