The historic conviction of the Michigan school shooter’s mother – Technologist

Has the US justice system opened a new chapter in the long history of mass killings in the country? On February 6, a jury found Jennifer Crumbley guilty of manslaughter for the crimes committed by her son, Ethan, at his high school in Oxford, Michigan, on November 30, 2021.

On that day, the 15-year-old pulled a gun from his backpack and opened fire in the halls, killing four high school students and wounding seven others before surrendering. So far, this is the usual American story. But, at a press conference three days later, Oakland County District Attorney Karen McDonald announced a highly unusual decision, still unique in the US: to charge the shooter’s parents with manslaughter.

The pages of their son’s diary, the macabre relics in his bedroom and the text messages to his mother and father exhumed from his phone are all evidence of murderous obsessions, mental suffering and cries for help that they ignored. James and Jennifer Crumbley seemed to be on the run when were picked up by police on makeshift mattresses in a former warehouse turned artists’ studio in Detroit. Like an evidence exhibit, they were carrying with them the invoice for the gun given to their son four days before the massacre.

They had been in prison for two years. In December 2023, Ethan Crumbley was sentenced to life imprisonment, with no possibility of parole. He declared that his parents could not be held responsible for his actions. But already, their trial drew more curiosity than his.

There was a certain risk in bringing this case before a jury, in other words, ordinary citizens probably dealing with difficult teenagers and sometimes gun owners. Shannon Smith, the mother’s lawyer, tried to play this card in her closing argument. “Can every parent really be responsible for everything their children do, especially when it’s not foreseeable?” It took the jury a day and a half to answer in the affirmative. There were 12 of them, six men and six women. They were not unanimous when they began their deliberations.

‘One word to advert a tragedy’

“This is probably the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do,” the Pontiac court president told them after their verdict was announced. Jennifer Crumbley kept her eyes lowered, almost closed, and her hands knotted. She had testified a few days earlier. “Do you think you knew or had reason to know that your son was a danger to anyone else?” her lawyer had asked.

– No. As a parent you spend your life to try to protect your child from other dangers. You never would think you have to protect your child from hurting somebody else. That was the hardest thing I had to stomach, that my child could kill other people.
– Do you believe you were thinking at that time: ‘I should to this but I am not doing it?’ Do you look back and think that?
– No I don’t. Of course I look back after what happened. I’ve asked myself If I would have done things differently. I would not.

You have 40% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.