James Crumbley, the father of a 15-year-old who shot and killed four students at Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter by an Oakland County jury on Thursday.
Crumbley and his wife Jennifer, who was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter last month, are the first parents to be convicted for a mass shooting carried out by their child, with their verdicts triggering debate about the culpability of parents in crimes committed by their children. Each could face sentences up to 15 years in prison.
“It’s very rare for parents to be held accountable when their children have access to firearms and do harm,” Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, tells TIME.
Winkler describes Thursday’s verdict as “not unexpected but still surprising,” adding that the facts in Crumbley’s case were “unusually” clear. “This case may not set a huge precedent,” he says, “because there won’t be as many cases where the facts are as egregious as this one.”
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James and Jennifer Crumbley had bought their son Ethan the pistol that the teen used in the November 2021 shooting that killed four students and injured seven. Ethan pleaded guilty in 2022 to numerous charges, including four counts of first-degree murder, and is serving a life sentence without parole.
In their separate trials, prosecutors argued that the Crumbleys had ignored warning signs about their son’s mental health and had been negligent in allowing their son to have a gun.
Prosecutors pointed to a journal entry Ethan had written: “I have zero HELP for my mental problems and it’s causing me to SHOOT UP THE F—ING SCHOOL … I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help.”
On the morning of the shooting, James and Jennifer…
