A mother's conviction gives prosecutors a new tactic in mass shooting cases
Tuesday's guilty verdict against the mother of a Michigan teen who killed four students in the state's deadliest school shooting in 2021 is likely to ripple through the nation's legal landscape as prosecutors weigh a new path to seeking justice in mass shootings.
But, legal experts say, don't expect a rush of similar cases.
“I've heard many people say they think a guilty verdict in this case will open the floodgates for these types of prosecutions in the future,” said Eve Brensike Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan. “To be honest, I'm not convinced that's true.”
That's because prosecutors in Michigan had particularly compelling evidence against the mother, Jennifer Crumbley — including text messages and the accounts of a meeting with school officials just hours before the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School — that jurors found she should have done. I knew the mental state of her son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time.
Ethan pleaded guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mrs. Crumbley was convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each student who killed her son. She faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, and sentencing is scheduled for April 9.
Mrs Crumbley's husband, James Crumbley, 47, will be tried separately in March.
“Can more prosecutors file charges, emboldened by these types of statements and the verdict?” said Professor Primus. “Certainly. Do I think they will be successful across the country by sustaining charges if they don't have the requisite facts to demonstrate true knowledge? No.”
Still, Professor Primus and other legal experts who have followed the case say the successful prosecution of Ms. Crumbley, 45, provides a template for prosecutors across the country to prosecute similar cases.
“I think in many ways this case will certainly cause prosecutors to look at their work differently when it comes to negligent parents, in terms of how they handle guns around the home, and how they make guns available to their children,” he said. George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney.
The issue of parental responsibility for children's crimes is something Mr. Gascón has considered before, with a recent case involving a minor charged with vehicular manslaughter.
“I was really excited to go after the dad,” he said. “Ultimately I was advised against that and we didn't do it. It would have been very new. I thought there was a lot of parental responsibility there.”
In the aftermath of mass shootings by teens and young adults, the spotlight often falls on parents, both to weigh the specific circumstances of the crime and to learn something that could prevent the next shooting somewhere in America.
“The discussion was: what can we do about this?” said Lewis Langham Jr., professor emeritus at Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan. “The parents should have done something. But it never got to the point where the parents were actually charged and now convicted, at least one of the parents here in Michigan. That is what is unique about this case.”
Experts expect prosecutors across the country will consider similar charges in mass shootings. But some said they also worried the tactic could be applied to many other circumstances, thereby widening racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
Evan Bernick, a law professor at Northern Illinois University, said the Crumbley case was “horrific.” But he added: “No one who is serious about rolling back mass incarceration should welcome an expansion of criminal liability, let alone an expansion of criminal liability, let alone an expansion that makes it easier for prosecutors to put parents in prison for the crimes of their children.”
He pointed to past examples where supervised parents led to racial inequality, such as truancy laws, which allowed prosecutors to go after parents for their children's school absenteeism. He now worries about higher stakes in the wake of the Crumbley case.
“If we have kids who are at risk of gang activity and their parents just haven't seen the signs and something terrible happens, I don't think we can trust prosecutors to comply, only in situations this heinous like this,” Mr. Bernick said.
Legal experts also say they worry the case will become a way for prosecutors to extract plea deals from parents, away from the national spotlight that the Crumbley case had.
“Having this tool as a way to threaten, warn, coerce or induce parents to accept settlement agreements – like so much of criminal law, I fear it will cost lives completely out of sight,” says Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
He added that the Crumbley case upends one of the most fundamental principles of criminal law that he teaches to his first-year students: “You are not responsible for the actions of someone else.”
The trial, its implications for justice and where the jury would end up have consumed conversations among Mr. Yankah's fellow professors in recent weeks.
“Honestly, we were all over the place,” he said. “Some people thought yes, some people thought no. Intellectually I thought it could go either way. But I have to admit, even though I say that, when I saw that she was actually found guilty, the first word out of my mouth was, “Wow.”