Crumbley convictions set a legal precedent for parents that could reach beyond shootings
The Michigan prosecutor who won convictions against the mother and father of teenage school shooter Ethan Crumbley said Friday her goal was not to ensure that the sins of other criminally convicted children are visited on their parents in court, but to prevent further gun violence.
The Michigan prosecutor who won convictions against the mother and father of teenage school shooter Ethan Crumbley said Friday her goal was not to ensure that the sins of other criminally convicted children are visited on their parents in court, but to prevent further gun violence.
“I hope it leads to more prevention of gun violence,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said. “I hope it leads to people taking more responsibility. I don’t want a situation where a lot of prosecutors are charging people or parents for things that their children did, or are doing.”
But the twin convictions of James and Jennifer Crumbley — the first parents to be held criminally responsible for a mass shooting committed by their child — create a legal precedent that could lead to prosecutors to bring more cases against parents for the actions of their children.
James Crumbley at Oakland County Circuit Court in Pontiac, Mich., on March 13.Bill Pugliano / Getty ImagesLawyers are “trained to argue cases on precedent,” Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told NBC News. “And I can see prosecutors using this in cases that won’t get this kind of national attention.”
“This case was particularly terrible and had a unique set of facts,” Yankah said of the 2021 mass shooting in a Detroit suburb that left four Oxford High School students dead. “I don’t know to what extent it will open the floodgates to similar kinds of prosecutions, but precedent has its own power and law.”
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