Mother of Michigan school shooter convicted of manslaughter in unprecedented case

July 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Geoff Bennett:

For the first time ever, a parent has been convicted in a mass school shooting.

Jennifer Crumbley today was found guilty on four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Her teenage son, Ethan, killed four students, Madiyson Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana, and Justin Shilling, and injured seven others in 2021 at Oxford High School in Michigan.

The gunman was sentenced to life in prison without parole back in December. His mother now faces up to 60 years in prison and will be sentenced in April.

For more on the verdict and broader legal questions, we turn to Ekow Yankah, law professor at the University of Michigan.

Thank you for being back with us.

And Jennifer Crumbley told jurors that it was her husband's responsibility to keep track of the gun. She said she saw no signs of mental distress in her son. How were the prosecutors able to convince the jury that her behavior crossed the line into recklessness, a conscious disregard, and ultimately involuntary manslaughter?

Ekow Yankah, University of Michigan Law School: You're right that she in some ways tried to blame what we call the empty chair, that is, point at a defendant who's not around.

And perhaps that's not surprising. The trial of the Crumbleys was meant to be a joint trial and was separated at the last moment. So, many of us speculated that there had been some legal questions where one of them thought the other could be held more liable or be painted in a worse light.

Ultimately, though, what Jennifer just couldn't convince the jury of is that, even given the legal principle that you're not responsible for someone else's acts, when she had so many years of notice, so many troubling moments, so many really damning facts, when she walked out of that schoolhouse knowing that her son had a gun, and having had administrators ask her if she wanted to take him home, that she could not have intervened somewhere along the way and saved four lives and saved seven others from injury.

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