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A few more things about the Crumbley case — 22 Comments

  1. These were awful parents, at least the mother, against whom the evidence of her maternal malpractice has been presented. They ought to have been charged with neglect and maybe abuse. It’s the son who is a murderer, and he was charged and pled guilty as an adult, I think. Accepting a bad legal outcome because this woman is a horrible example of motherhood is dangerous.

  2. Can’t help but repeat myself here.
    In situations like this, it is imperative that SOMEBDODY be hurt, and that hurt the equivalent to that felt by victims, next of kin, and anybody else who’s heard about the/any such issue.
    But you can’t get–metaphor alert–more than 55 gallons into a 55 gallon drum, the drum standing for the perp. The excess still has to go someplace.
    And when some parties–the school–are ducking responsibility, and some parties are looking for political gain, the excess hurt is immensely valuable if it can be aimed…someplace else.

  3. I am unfamiliar with the laws in the jurisdiction in question, but in Pennsylvania, with which I am familiar, School Districts and other “political subdivisions” and “local agencies” are statutorily immunized against civil liability, except under certain circumstances. Negligent supervision is not one of them, so it is possible that the result in the subject case was mandated by a similar immunity law.

  4. Not a slippery slope, but rather a race to the bottom. This will be used and maybe quite soon. And yes it will be the parents of a shooter that will be charged.

  5. Kate, I respect you. I want you to know that. But I don’t want to get into the business of criminalizing parents who can’t believe the worst about their children.

  6. As I understand it, the boy was charged as an adult and admitted to the charges of murder. To me that would/should exonerate anyone else – the mother, the father, school officials – from any responsibility in this case.

    This is clearly an attempt at some sort of gun control expansion, even if just to intimidate otherwise lawful citizens from acquiring guns.

  7. Steve57, I think we’re in agreement about this.

    Along with others, I think this is a back door attempt at gun control.

  8. Michigan is an odd state. It elected Whitmer. And what about the prosecution of that young guy for the shooting during the riot. County attorney was whacked out.

  9. That was Kyle Rittenhouse and it was Kenosha Wisconsin. Unless you are remembering someone unjustly prosecuted/persecuted in Michigan. The Whittmer “kidnappers” were in Michigan but didn’t shoot anything except their mouths.

  10. As you point out, Neo, that this was gun violence at a school played heavily in this judgement. I also think that the fact that the parents can be seen as unsympathetic “white trash” rather than a minority group plays here too.

    Just wait and see if the same parties who cheer this verdict cheer when the precedent is applied to underage minority murderers and their often struggling parents or, more likely, single parent (mother). If you think the Crumbleys were shitty parents, just wait until you get the case-by-case on parenting styles of the inner city!

    Bad, bad precedent.

  11. This happened to a much lesser extent with the Highland Park, IL parade shooter’s father.

    The father was charged because he sponsored his son’s application for a Firearm Owners Identification card (FOID). The soonsorship was required because the son was under 18. The son bought the murder weapon after he got his FOID.

    The father was charged with reckless conduct causing great bodily harm, which is a felony, although the son could have conceivably obtained an FOID and the gun without his father’s signature, *after* he turned 21, nine months before the shooting. The father accepted a plea deal, spent a month in jail and was fined I think $20K.

    I believe the prosecution of the father was political, because people were understandably outraged by the shooting, (and yes, there is a strong anti-gun culture in Highland Park.) While it was obviously a mistake to sign the FOID application, the father argued persuasively (IMO) that he shouldn’t have been expected to predict what would happen two and a half years after he signed the paperwork.

    https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2022/12/16/prosecutors-file-reckless-conduct-charges-against-father-of-highland-park-parade-shooting-suspect/

  12. “Along with others, I think this is a back door attempt at gun control.” (from Kate, above).

    It’s quite a bit more than that, primarily overreach of state authority. If persons associated with, and potentially subordinate to, an event can be caused to suffer full responsibility for that event, there is no limit to what government can do in the arena of demanding, and enforcing, responsibility. One has to ask how far down the “degrees of separation” chain prosecutors intend to go.

    One version of this is suing a gun manufacturer because Person X procured one of their fully functional products, through means legal or iillegal, and used it criminally. The future version will be the owner of a gasoline station serving felony time for selling the gasoline fueling the car that a drunk driver operated which wound up in an accident that claimed the life of some valued personage.

    That such punitive action is employed selectively is evident by the lack of similar prosecution for single inner city mothers whose offspring populate the crime report pages. I also note that quite a few members of that same “prosecutorial class” embrace no-bail release programs for miscreants, a number of whom are initially charged with crimes of violence.

  13. With this precedent, when do we go after the FBI agents who had terrorists and mass murderers on their radar, but failed to act?

  14. “…this verdict should strike fear into the heart of every parent…”
    I think that was the point.

  15. For more than two years [the parents] have been kept in a county jail, unable to make bail.

    So, two years with no income.
    If found not guilty, they have still lost everything they owned.

    And for those who say the parents should have got help for the kid, what kind of help? A psychiatrist cannot talk a crazy person out of being crazy, and that same crazy will generally stop taking prescribed meds that may, or may not, calm him down.

  16. All true, but the fact that she seemed to care more about her job and her horses than her son’s problems or the misery he caused damned her in the eyes of the public and the jury. Like Meursault, the (anti-)hero of Albert Camus “The Stranger” she was condemned for her strange and indifferent responses to events (though Meursault actually did commit murder). She was found guilty as much for how she behaved after the killing as before it. For all the concern about hovering, intrusive “helicopter parents,” indifferent, apathetic, uninvolved parents earn more condemnation — certainly when something like this happens.

    I wonder if the case will become a topic of discussion, or even a cause celebre for feminists: the defense of a career woman who breaks with traditional ideas of family and “leans in” the business world too much. Probably not, as the shooter’s father is also going on trial. If the children of people like this shouldn’t have guns, it’s also true that people like this probably shouldn’t have children, and that’s probably the takeaway for feminists and others.

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