by Michigan jurors, after 11 hours of deliberations, found Jennifer Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter Tuesday in the shooting death of her teenage son, who carried out the state’s deadliest school shooting more than two years ago.
The trial became a lightning rod for issues of parental responsibility, at a time of frequent cases of gun violence perpetrated by minors. It was the most prominent example of prosecutors seeking to hold parents accountable for violent crimes committed by their children.
Ms. Crumbley, 45, was convicted of four counts of manslaughter, one for each of the four students who were shot and killed by her son at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. The son, Ethan Crumbley , who was 15 years old. at that time, he used a gun to kill 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; Tate Myre, 16 years old; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14 years old. Seven other people were injured. The gun was a gift from her parents.
“We all know this is one of the hardest things you’ve ever done,” Judge Cheryl Matthews of Oakland County Circuit Court told jurors at the courthouse in Pontiac, Michigan, immediately after the verdict was read. .
Mrs. Crumbley sat almost still, eyes downcast, until she was handcuffed and led out of court. She has been held since December in the Oakland County Jail.
Ms Crumbley faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison after being found guilty of all four charges. The sentencing is scheduled for April 9.
Ethan, who pleaded guilty to 24 charges, including first-degree murder, was sentenced last year to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He did not testify at his mother’s trial.
Mrs Crumbley’s husband, James Crumbley, 47, will be tried separately in March.
In recent months, parents whose children carried out gun violence in other states have pleaded guilty to charges of reckless conduct or neglect, part of an effort by some prosecutors to hold parents accountable when they are suspected of allowing deadly violence by their children.
The charges against Ms. Crumbley were more serious, making her trial a major test case for prosecutors.
The decision to charge the parents with involuntary manslaughter was something of a gut judgment, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen D. McDonald said in an interview shortly after the charges were filed, adding that it even sparked opposition from some. members of your staff.
But he emphasized in his closing argument on Friday that the seriousness of the charges reflected the depth of Ms. Crumbley’s negligence and the horrific crime that resulted from it.
He said Ms Crumbley was guilty of “failing to exercise ordinary care when the smallest, tragically simple thing could have prevented” a disaster.
Still, Tuesday’s guilty verdict may have ramifications for other trials, according to Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.
“We pay attention to spectacular cases,” he said, “and we don’t pay attention to how much they change the law in non-spectacular cases: how many plea deals, how many people will spend more time in prison because they don’t want to risk a guilty verdict like this.” .
Ms Crumbley’s defense lawyer, Shannon Smith, argued during the trial that parenting could be a complicated and unpredictable job, and that no mother could be perfect. “This case is very dangerous for parents,” she said during her closing arguments Friday.
Mr. Yankah said that after this verdict, “I think there will be a lot of parents who will think: If I have a troubled child and I’m doing the best I can, at what point is his behavior going to stop?” Is it no longer my responsibility?
In the Pontiac, Michigan, courtroom, jurors spent seven days listening to harrowing testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses, including Ms. Crumbley, who testified in her own defense for about three hours last week.
Prosecutors argued that Ms. Crumbley should have noticed her son’s distress and prevented him from committing an unspeakable act of violence. Marc Keast, one of the prosecutors, said she and her husband “did not do any number of tragically small, easy things that would have prevented all of this from happening.”
For the defence, Ms Smith described Ms Crumbley as a “hypervigilant mother” who was attentive to her son’s needs and could not have foreseen what would happen.
“I ask that you find Jennifer Crumbley not guilty,” Ms. Smith told the jury on Friday. “Not just for Jennifer Crumbley, but for every mother who is doing the best she can and who could easily be in her shoes.”
During the trial, prosecutors focused in part on Ethan’s access to a firearm. But jurors also had to wrestle with a more abstract question: Whether witness testimony, along with an extensive collection of text messages, could be a reliable window into a troubled teen’s mental state or a mother’s relationship with your son.
Jurors were shown messages Ethan sent to a friend in April 2021, complaining of insomnia, paranoia and hearing voices. Jurors were also shown messages he sent to his mother in March 2021, in which he suggested her house was haunted by a demon. Ms. Crumbley, prosecutors noted, did not always respond.
But in his testimony, Crumbley said Ethan and his parents had joked for years about whether their house was haunted, adding that his son was just “playing.”
Prosecutors also shared messages exchanged between Ms. Crumbley and her husband, colleagues and friends, which they said suggested Ms. Crumbley had paid more attention to her two horses and her extramarital affair than to the needs of her son.
Mrs. Crumbley testified that she had not seen her son as a danger to others. “As a parent, you spend your entire life trying to protect your child from other dangers,” she said. “You would never think that you have to protect your child from hurting someone else.”
While Ms. Crumbley accompanied Ethan to a shooting range a few days before the rampage, she testified Thursday that her husband, who had purchased the gun used in the shooting, was more familiar with firearms and had been responsible for storing the Sig Sauer pistol. .
Ms. Crumbley also described a meeting with school officials that took place about two hours before the attack. She and her husband were called to the high school after Ethan wrote worrying things on a math worksheet, including the phrase “blood everywhere.”
Ms. Crumbley said that after a counselor shared her concerns about Ethan’s mental health, they decided together that their son could stay at school instead of going home alone. They did not search his backpack, which contained the gun he would soon point at his schoolmates.
On Thursday, a detective walked jurors through the pages of Ethan’s diary, which was found at the school after the shooting. The teenager had written about a plan to cause bloodshed, adding drawings of weapons and requests for help regarding his mental health.
“My parents don’t listen to me when I ask for help or a therapist,” Ethan wrote. But Ms. Crumbley said she had never seen her diary entries or heard her son ask for a therapist.
Prosecutors had also suggested that the Crumbleys attempted to flee authorities by leaving their Oxford home shortly after the shooting. The couple was arrested in Detroit on December 4, 2021. Smith, the defense attorney, argued that they feared for their safety in the face of relentless threats, and Crumbley testified that she had planned to turn herself in.
Campbell Robertson contributed reports.
