The parents of a young man who killed four students at his high school have been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. This is a heckuva’ precedent.
Yahoo: “We’re living in a new world now, and that new world is a prosecutor saying, ‘If we’re not going to have legislation, if we’re not going to have significant protections, we’re going to take it upon ourselves to use the law in a way that gets accountability to everyone and anyone who could have potentially been involved,’” CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday evening.
Prosecutors during his weeklong trial argued James Crumbley was “grossly negligent.” He bought a SIG Sauer 9 mm gun for his son four days before the attack, failed to properly secure it, ignored his son’s downward-spiraling mental health and did not take “reasonable care” to prevent foreseeable danger, prosecutors said.
They also argued the shooting could have been prevented if James or Jennifer Crumbley had listened to a school counselor’s recommendation and taken their son out of school the day of the shooting, or if they had mentioned to school employees they had just bought him a gun.
My friend Ted Meehan had a great point on Facebook. He wrote:
A MIchigan father of a 15 year old school shooter today was convicted of being an accessory to murder. In effect, if your child makes a destructive decision and acts on it, YOU are responsible. So, the rational implication here is that THE PARENT MUST BE IN CONTROL – and will be held accountable for catastrophic decisions by their child. However, Courts in California and elsewhere are prohibiting PARENTS from having any control over a pubescent child submitting to hormone blockers or gender reassignment surgery! Planned Parenthood is marketing these “services”! Can the law prevent a parent from control over destructive decisions that victimize their child, but then hold the parents responsible for destructive decisions by their child that victimize others?
You can’t have it both ways. Either parents are responsible for their children or they’re not. Which one?
