Holding the mother of a Michigan school shooter criminally responsible for the deaths of four classmates is a novel but narrow avenue in the effort to reduce gun violence. But it can help.
The guilty verdict in the trial of Jennifer Crumbley won’t end the horrific epidemic or stop the terror of school shootings. It will bring little comfort to the families of Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14. Each was shot and killed by Crumbley’s son, Ethan, in November 2021. Yet by convicting Jennifer Crumbley of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, a jury held her accountable for “gross negligence” in not doing more to stop Ethan, then 15, from harming others.
This case featured a particular set of circumstances and strong evidence that made it a compelling example of tools prosecutors can use to go after parents who don’t take responsible steps to stop children they know are troubled and may be violent. Jennifer Crumbley, Michigan prosecutors said, failed “to exercise ordinary care,” to do “the smallest of things [that] could have saved Hana and Tate and Madisyn and Justin.”
In a nation that does far too little about the scourge of gun violence, any attempt to achieve some justice for these families and their community, to control what seems uncontrollable and stop what seems unstoppable, is a step forward.
In Uvalde, Texas, the failed police response was appropriately examined; a Justice Department report last month detailed massive failures, and there are reports that a grand jury is assessing whether to bring charges for law enforcement negligence. Adam Lanza killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012, as well as his mother and himself. Lanza was an adult, but his mother was a gun enthusiast who taught Adam to shoot. In the aftermath, Adam Lanza’s father, who hadn’t seen him for two years prior, wondered whether he could have done anything…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply