United States – The same month, when a Michigan woman who was convicted of manslaughter in a school shooting had been committed to prison, the father of the gunner man had to face a similar trial by the court.
Prosecutor’s Perspective
Jurors on trial ought to have been told yesterday in his opening statement by the prosecutor Marc Keast that it was “a nightmare and a nightmare one that was preventable, and it was foreseeable.”
Crumbley has been charged with four involuntary manslaughter counts based on the prosecution’s claim that he disregarded the warning signs regarding his son’s mental state and then supplied an XD-Subcompact ‘thin line’ model 9mm pistol that was purchased in December as a present for Ethan, as reported by Reuters.
This was only four days prior to the day that Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, used the gun for the killing of four students at Oxford High School, which is near Detroit.
“James Crumbley failed to secure that gun in a way to prevent his son from accessing it,” Keast told jurors.
Defense’s Perspective
During her opening statement, Mariell Lehman, the defense attorney for James Crumbley, told the jury that her client could not have reasonably predicted that his son would commit a mass murder.
“He did not know what his son was planning,” Lehman said. “He did not purchase that gun with the knowledge that his son may use it against other people.”
In 2022, Ethan Crumbley confessed to four charges of first-degree murder and several more and was given life imprisonment with no parole in December.
Previous Convictions and Parental Involvement
Last Feb. 6, Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the dropped-off-at-school shooter, became the first parent in American history to be charged with the gun violence committed by their child. The U.S., a country that grapples with a persistent gun crime problem, has repeatedly seen school shootings over the years. A great number of them were conducted by actual or ex-students of the schools.
Counsel for James Crumbley claims that, simply because a parent cannot tell in advance when their child is going to do such a thing, he had securely stored the firearm away from his son at their home. Jennifer Crumbley, just like Ethan’s stepmother, Charleston Crumbley, asserted similar claims during her trial.
In February 2018, the defense lawyers for James Crumbley argued before Judge Cheryl Matthews of Michigan’s Sixth Judicial Circuit Court that the lawyer would not be able to get a fair trial because his wife had been convicted. In their plea, they wanted the court transfer, but Matthews left that demand.
The act of school shootings is a tragedy that relates to many topics— mental illness, domestic violence, neglect, gun rights, and the right to privacy of the people involved.
The Crumley parents were called to the school that morning to request that Ethan have counseling and that the parents should take him home, as per the prosecution. The couple defied their son’s culture home and did not open the backpack or ask him how the gun was, prosecutors said, as reported by Reuters.
Prosecutors claim that after Ethan Crumbley was brought back to class, he took the gun and exited a lavatory to start shooting.