How Did the Parents of the Michigan School Shooter End Up Facing Prison Time for Manslaughter?
On November 30, 2021, fifteen-year-old high school student Ethan Crumbley, armed with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, murdered four classmates and injured seven others.
His legal consequences were resolved anticlimactically, with guilty pleas and a life sentence in prison, but the story of his murderous rampage occupied courts for years because Oakland County prosecutors made the bold choice to bring charges against the parents of the shooter.
A High-Profile Case From the Start
The legal drama began almost immediately. While reports of the shooting were still dominating the news headlines, the parents of the shooter, James and Jennifer Crumbley, had disappeared from their home, apparently fleeing from authorities. When they were apprehended in Detroit a few days later, they had withdrawn a large amount of cash from ATMs and turned off their cell phones. At a bail hearing, neither parent could receive a lower bond because of the flight risk they presented, and each remained incarcerated for over two years while awaiting trial.
Their unprecedented charges for manslaughter were immediately subject to attack by the lawyers for the parents, who argued that their son was solely responsible for the killings and that the prosecution could not possibly meet their burden of showing that either parent’s acts had caused the death of the four students. This attempt to dismiss the charges was denied, and the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld the appeal. When the Michigan Supreme Court refused to overturn that ruling, the trial process could finally begin.
Each parent was tried separately for their involvement in the events that led up to the shooting. After the two trials concluded, each of Crumbley’s parents ended up convicted of manslaughter, and they were sentenced to serve up to fifteen years in prison. Now, the two cases could serve as a blueprint for other prosecutions or become the basis for further appeals.
A Mother Who Accelerated Past the Warning Signs
The case against Jennifer Crumbley, the first to be tried, relied on evidence of specific moments in the events leading up to the shooting and her poor decision-making. Not only did she put the murder weapon in her son’s hand, but she also ignored warning signs about her son’s mental health that any reasonable parent would have heeded.
When her son complained about having hallucinations, seeing “demons” and hearing voices, she refused to get him professional help and even suggested that he might be abusing illegal drugs. On the morning of the shooting, when faced with evidence that her son had homicidal and suicidal thoughts, she refused to take him out of school to get help. A school administrator testified that he had never before seen parents refuse to take a child out of school for treatment when presented with the option.
Despite her fifteen-year-old child’s expressions of mental disturbance, Jennifer wholeheartedly supported his obsession with guns. Just three days before the school shooting, she took him to a firing range, where he practiced loading, aiming, and firing the eventual murder weapon. Both mother and son enthusiastically posted photos on their social media about the outing, with Jennifer describing it as, “Mom and son day, testing out his new X-mas present.” When her son’s school contacted her after he was caught looking at bullets and shooting videos on his cell phone in class, her response to him was simply, “LOL. I’m not mad. You have to learn to not get caught.”
Hours after she decided not to remove her son from school to get treatment, Jennifer learned about the school shooting from media reports. During sentencing, the judge blamed her for glorifying guns and ignoring red flags that any reasonable parent would have heeded.
A Father Who Offered Unfettered Access and Displayed Unrepentant Defiance
Although the factual allegations against James Crumbley converged with those against his wife at the fateful meeting with school officials on the morning of November 30, 2021, his role in the preceding events was slightly different. Still, he failed his son and ultimately failed the victims and the community by making a dangerous weapon available to an unstable child.
Like his wife, James ignored his son’s complaints about hallucinations and hearing voices for months prior to the shooting, though most of those complaints were actually directed toward his wife. He knew that his son kept a journal, followed his son’s social media accounts, and had access to his son’s smartphone, but it is unclear whether he ever bothered to look in any of those places to see the disturbing messages about guns, homicide, mental anguish, or even references to school shootings that were available there.
James used his own identification to purchase the semiautomatic pistol that his son would later take to the shooting range with Jennifer and, shortly thereafter, use in the mass shooting at his high school. In doing so, he signed a form that acknowledged that purchasing a gun for someone else is illegal, and he received an official pamphlet that warned him, among other things, that “misuse of handguns is a leading contributor to juvenile violence and fatalities.” The purchase included a gun lock, which was apparently never used.
The night of the purchase, James’ son was posting photos of the new gun on his social media accounts, referring to it as “my new beauty.” When James met with school officials on the morning of the shooting, he did not tell them that the gun his son had drawn on a math worksheet looked remarkably like the “X-mas present” he had purchased a few days earlier. He did not remove his son from school or ask to check his backpack, which contained both the handgun and his son’s journal.
After the news of the school shooting reached James, he went home to check on his guns and discovered that the new handgun and the 9mm ammunition was missing. Shortly thereafter, he called 911 to report his fear that his son had taken the weapon to school and had committed the shooting.
Detectives would later find the open case for gun next to a gun safe, which contained James’ other pistols. Multiple gun locks were found, but all were still in their original packaging. At trial, a prosecutor demonstrated to the jury how one of those locks could have been used, in about ten seconds, to deny unauthorized use of the weapon.
During sentencing, the judge excoriated James for providing his son with “unfettered access” to guns, making threatening statements about prosecutors in calls from the jail, presenting himself as a victim, and even stating that he would not have done anything differently in the days leading up to the killings.
Will the Crumbley Convictions Lead to Wider Changes?
The bold decision to prosecute the parents of a school shooter has prompted discussion in the legal community. Many wonder whether the Crumbley case might start a new trend of holding parents responsible for violent acts committed by kids with guns, and they understandably wonder whether such enforcement might be effective in slowing the epidemic of gun violence in American schools.
In the over twenty years that have passed since the infamous Columbine High School massacre, efforts to prevent school shootings have seemed largely fruitless. Even though most school shootings by minors involve firearms made easily accessible by parents, the criminal prosecution of the parents has been practically nonexistent before the Crumbley case. Parents in Michigan, at least, will now have extra incentive to follow some common-sense prevention steps, like securing weapons with trigger locks or simply not putting guns under the Christmas tree for their mentally anguished children.
Some also wonder whether others, like school officials, could be charged under a similar theory. The Oakland County prosecutors issued a statement to address that concern, stating that school officials cooperated with the investigation without receiving any promises of immunity from prosecution. Still, there was an insufficient factual basis for criminal charges against school officials. A $100 million lawsuit against the school was vigorously defended and ultimately dismissed.
Opportunities for Appeal
As is so often true in legal proceedings, the end of a case can just be the beginning of the appeal. Now that the Crumbleys are sentenced, they can appeal their convictions. Should they successfully launch a winning legal argument, they could be granted a new trial or even set free.
On the other hand, if the higher courts affirm these convictions, any deterrent effect brought about by sending the shooter’s parents to jail could end up with more staying power. If more parents are encouraged to secure their weapons properly, that just might prevent the next would-be school shooter from getting his hands on a gun.
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