Kurt Mahlburg
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.
‘Who raised that kid?’ is a sentiment that has been supercharged by a Michigan jury, which [last] week unanimously found a mother guilty of manslaughter for the school shooting carried out by her teenage son.
Jennifer Crumbley is the first parent in United States history to be convicted on such a charge.
Her son is already serving life in prison without parole for killing four of his classmates and injuring seven others in the November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in the outer suburbs of Detroit.
Found guilty on four counts of involuntary manslaughter – generally defined as the accidental killing of a person through recklessness or negligence – Jennifer faces up to 15 years behind bars for each charge, with sentencing to take place in April.
Her husband, James, will be tried separately on the same charges, and has already pleaded not guilty.
As reported by the BBC, “the question at the heart of the trial was whether the mother could have foreseen and prevented the deadly crime”. Among the facts of the case weighed by the jury:
Ms Crumbley and her husband James bought the gun their son used just days before the shooting…
At her trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Ethan Crumbley had wanted mental health help and complained of hallucinations but said his parents did not get him treatment. Ms Crumbley said on the stand that she did not think her son had mental health problems.
On the morning of the shooting, the parents cut short a school meeting about a disturbing drawing their son had made to go to work and declined to take the then 15-year-old home.
School officials sent him back to class without checking his backpack, which contained a gun.
Just hours later, he killed Hana St Juliana, 14, Myre, 16, and Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling, both 17.
While there is abundant evidence to convict Jennifer and James Crumbley of bad parenting, their being tried as de facto accessories to a school shooting opens the door to an entirely new realm of legal possibilities.
Should the line be drawn at school shootings, or should courts hold parents responsible if their child commits murder? What about assault? Burglary? Cybercrime? Misgendering?
Moreover, should the line be drawn at parents? What about grandparents? Other significant adults? What about holding an entire race responsible for the sins committed by the few? But I digress…
As the wise Thomas Sowell has quipped, “We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.”
Twelve jurors in Michigan seemed to like the idea, in any case.
The BBC quoted a clinical professor of law at the University of Michigan, Frank Vandervort, who argued, “I don’t fear that this is going to open the floodgates to parents being charged in a run of the mill case… I think the facts of this case are so unique and sort of extreme.”
… said every slippery slope denialist, ever.
Opening the floodgates – also known as setting a legal precedent – is precisely what case law does.
The frightening future that may yet greet us, as Mercator’s editor Michael Cook recently highlighted to me, is more than just parents being held responsible for their children’s crimes – but parents needing permission from the state to raise their kids in the first place.
In a piece published here last October, ethicists were quoted heralding a Brave New World in which parents – who, it was argued, “have no right to rear their biological children” – should be subjected to a parental licensing scheme.
Already drafted into California’s Assembly Bill 957 was that judges should “weigh parental affirmation of a child’s gender identity or expression along with the young person’s health, safety and welfare when determining visitation and custody arrangements.”
All for the greater good, of course.
Here’s a better idea.
Parents raise their own children. And everyone is tried only for the crimes they committed.
Revolutionary, I know. But it has worked well so far.