- Jennifer Crumbley was convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter
- Her son Ethan, 17, killed four children at Oxford High School in Michigan
The mother of a US school shooter is facing 60 years in jail after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter for her role in his crime.
Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty at a court in Michigan in a landmark legal case which could reshape the prosecution of school shootings.
Prosecutors argued that Crumbley was so negligent as a parent that she was partly to blame when her son Ethan, then 15, killed four people and injured seven at Oxford High School in Pontiac in November 2021.
They put forward the novel theory of extended parental liability which the jury agreed with after 11 hours of deliberations.
The trial heard that Crumbley was more interested in an extramarital affair, her horses and going for nights out on the town, than spending time with her mentally disturbed son.
The 45-year-old and her husband James Crumbley, 47, bought the gun their son used in the shooting four days before the rampage, the jury heard.
They failed to secure it properly and Crumbley even went to a shooting range with Ethan to practice a few days prior to the killing.
The Crumbleys were accused of ignoring red flags about their son which were made clear in his final diary entries before the shooting.
Ethan wrote: ‘My parents won’t listen to me about help or (a) therapist’.
In another entry he said: ‘I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the f****** school’.
A subsequent search of the teen’s home found his room messy, with with paper targets from a shooting range on his wall.
An empty bottle of whiskey was on a table beside his bed. At the time of the attack he was six years under America’s legal drinking age.
The safe used to house his Sig Sauer handgun was empty on his parents’ bed.
There were two other guns in a separate safe that could be unlocked with the code 0-0-0.
Two hours before the attack, Crumbley was called to Ethan’s high school for a meeting where he wrote about ‘blood everywhere’ in a maths textbook.
During the trial, defence lawyer Shannon Smith said that the case was ‘dangerous’ to parents.
She asked the jury to find Crumbley not guilty ‘for every parent doing the best they can, who could easily be in (her) shoes’.
Ethan is already serving life in prison after admitting 24 counts including murder. His mother is expected to be sentenced on April 9th.
James Crumbley is expected to stand trial next month on the same involuntary manslaughter charges, which he has denied.
Speaking to The New York Times, legal expert Eve Brensike Primus said that despite the historical significance of the conviction, the evidence against Ethan Crumbley’s parents is not common among the parents of other shooters.
‘I have heard many people say they think a guilty verdict in this case will open the floodgates to these kinds of prosecutions going forward. To be honest, I’m not convinced that’s true,’ Primus said.
Thought the professor did add that it could create a template for other prosecutors seeking justice for mass shootings.
The father of a 17-year-old victim who Ethan gunned down hopes Crumbley’s conviction will wake up other parents.
Craig Shilling, whose son Justin was one of the four murdered students, was present for the verdict at Oakland County Circuit Court.
Speaking outside the courtroom moments after Crumbley was found guilty, Mr Shilling said: ‘The cries have been heard, and I feel this verdict is gonna echo throughout every household in the country.’
‘I feel it’s necessary, and I’m happy with the verdict. It’s still a sad situation to be in. It’s gotta stop. It’s an accountability, and this is what we’ve been asking for for a long time now,’ he added.
The four guilty verdicts — one for each student slain at Oxford High School — were returned after about 11 hours of deliberations.
Crumbley looked down and shook her head slightly as each juror was polled after the verdicts were read.
On her way out of the courtroom, prosecutor Karen McDonald hugged relatives of Shilling and Madisyn Baldwin.
‘Thank you,’ a man whispered to her.
A gag order by the judge prevented McDonald and defense attorney Shannon Smith from speaking to reporters.
On the morning of November 30, 2021, school staff members were concerned about a violent drawing of a gun, bullet, and wounded man, accompanied by desperate phrases, on Ethan Crumbley’s math assignment.
His parents were called to the school for a meeting, but they didn’t take the boy home.
A few hours later, Ethan pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot 10 students and a teacher. No one had checked the backpack.
The gun was the Sig Sauer 9mm his father had purchased with him just four days earlier. His mother had taken her son to a shooting range that same weekend.
Outside the courthouse, the jury forewoman, who declined to give her name, said jurors were influenced by evidence that Crumbley was the last adult to possess the gun. That ‘really hammered it home,’ she told reporters.
Indeed, the jury saw images of Crumbley leaving the shooting range with the gun in a box.
‘You saw your son shoot the last practice round before the (school) shooting on Nov. 30. You saw how he stood… He knew how to use the gun,’ assistant prosecutor Marc Keast said while cross-examining the mother last week.
‘Yes, he did,’ Jennifer Crumbley replied.
In her closing argument Friday, McDonald said she filed the unprecedented charges because of the ‘unique, egregious’ facts leading up to the massacre.
School officials insisted they would not have agreed to keep Ethan on campus that day if the parents had shared information about the new gun, which the boy on social media called his ‘beauty’.
The words with the disturbing drawing said: ‘The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. The world is dead. My life is useless.’
‘He literally drew a picture of what he was going to do,’ McDonald said. ‘It says, ‘Help me.’
Besides 17-year-old Justin Shilling and 17-year old Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St Juliana, 14, and Tate Myre, 16, were also killed.
Ethan, now 17, pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism and is serving a life sentence.
Jennifer Crumbley told jurors that it was her husband’s job to keep track of the gun. She also said she saw no signs of mental distress in her son.
‘We would talk. We did a lot of things together,’ she testified. ‘I trusted him, and I felt I had an open door. He could come to me about anything.’
In a journal found by police, Ethan wrote that his parents wouldn’t listen to his pleas for help.
‘I have zero help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to shoot up the… school,’ he wrote.
Prosecutors introduced evidence that Crumbley texted his mother in spring 2021 about ‘demons’ throwing bowls and other hallucinations.
But she told the jury it was ‘just Ethan messing around’.
‘I have asked myself if I would have done anything differently. I wouldn’t have. I wish he would have killed us instead,’ she testified.
The jury of six men and six women included people who own guns or grew up with them in their home.
Crumbley will get credit for roughly two-and-a-half years in the county jail when she returns to court for sentencing on April 9.
The judge will set the minimum prison sentence, based on scoring guidelines and other factors.
It will be up to the Michigan parole board to determine how long she actually stays in prison. The maximum term for involuntary manslaughter is 15 years.
Prosecutors have not said if they will ask for consecutive sentences on the four convictions, which could mean a maximum of 60 years if Judge Cheryl Matthews agrees.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
