A Parent's Responsibility

[Ken]

Yesterday Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the mass shooter at Oxford High School, was found guilty of voluntary mansluaghter: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/us/j ... =url-share

Michigan jurors, after 11 hours of deliberations, found Jennifer Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday for the gun rampage committed by her teenage son, who carried out the state’s deadliest school shooting more than two years ago.

The trial became a lightning rod for issues of parental responsibility, in a time of frequent cases of gun violence carried out by minors. It was the most high-profile example of prosecutors seeking to hold parents responsible for violent crimes committed by their children.

Ms. Crumbley, 45, was convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the four students who were shot to death by her son at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. The son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, used a pistol to kill Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14. Seven other people were injured. The gun was a gift from his parents.

“We all know that this is one of the hardest things you’ve ever done,” Judge Cheryl Matthews of the Oakland County Circuit Court told jurors at the courthouse in Pontiac, Mich., immediately after the verdict was read.

In the last few months, parents whose children carried out gun violence in other states have pleaded guilty to charges of reckless conduct or neglect, part of a push by some prosecutors to hold parents accountable when they are suspected of enabling deadly violence by their children.

I'm wondering what others here thing about this. I have mixed feelings about prosecuting parents in cases like this because the possibility for prosecutorial abuse is obvious. But this case, in which parents bought their troubled and psychotic 15-year-old kid a Sig Sauer and ignored countless red flags, some accountability does seem warranted.