By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters). While criminal charges are unlikely to be filed against Ethan Crumbley and his parents for their involvement in the shooting deaths of four high school students, there may not have been precedent. Legal experts say that prosecutors could still present a compelling case.

Detroit police stated Saturday early that James Crumbley’s parents had been taken into custody

Michigan prosecutors on Friday charged https://www.reuters.com/world/us/parents-michigan-teen-accused-school-shooting-could-face-own-charges-2021-12-03 the couple with involuntary manslaughter for buying their son the weapon as a Christmas gift and ignoring warning signs as late as the day of the shooting. According to them, Jennifer Crumbley sent her son a text saying, “LOL! I am not mad at YOU.” He was caught by a teacher searching his mobile phone for ammunition while he was in class.

Ethan Crumbley’s drawing of a gun, bullet and bleeding body was discovered by a teacher the morning before the shooting. The drawings included the words, “Blood everywhere”, and “The thoughts will not stop-help me!” James and Jennifer Crumbley refused to take their son to school, check his backpack, or question about the gun after being shown the photograph.

Mariell and Shannon Lehman (Crumbleys) denied Friday that their clients were running from law enforcement.

Michigan has no laws that hold gun owners accountable for failing to protect children’s guns. According to experts, this means that prosecutions will use traditional criminal law. They must show that the Crumbleys are not only negligent but negligent or reckless.

Ethan Crumbley was charged as an adult even though he’s under 18 years old.

FIRST CASE AGAINST PARENTS

This case seems to be the first in which parents have been charged with teen school shooting victims. Experts say that while other parents have been accused of killing their children with unsecured guns in the past, these cases involve much younger children.

One case in Michigan was where a 6-year-old used a gun to kill a classmate. The owner of the weapon, according to Michigan State University, pleaded not guilty to voluntary manslaughter. April Zeoli is a Michigan State University professor in the School of Criminal Justice. She said the prosecution provided a parallel to the Crumbleys and set a precedent for holding them responsible. The case also involved an adult who failed to protect a firearm used by a student during a school shooting.

Robert Leider is a Professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He said that this and other cases are different than the Crumbleys because children cannot legally have criminal intent.

“Here is a teenage boy who has the ability to create his own criminal intention,” Leider stated. “That is enough to break the chain of causality” between Crumbleys, the shooting and them.

Eric Ruben is a Southern Methodist University professor in the Dedman School of Law. He said that whether or not prosecutors succeed will depend on both their facts and how they approach it. According to Ruben, a case that is focused on the Crumbleys doings – including buying the gun when it was dangerous – would be more successful than one that concentrates on their failures.

For them to be convicted of failing to act, he stated, prosecutions would need to establish that they had a duty toward the victims to indict the parents.

Michigan law forbids anyone under 18 to possess or buy firearms. This is except when hunting with licenses and an adult supervising. Karen McDonald, Oakland County Prosecutor, stated that the charges were meant to send a message: gun owners are responsible.

Ruben indicated that Ruben believed the parents would defend themselves and argue that they couldn’t have foreseen their children being shot, so they are not responsible.

Lawrence Dubin of the University of Detroit Mercy was a professor of law. According to Dubin it is possible that the charges of manslaughter could have been supported if parents knew their son was mentally unstable but allowed him access to the firearm anyway.

Leider stated that the facts as alleged by prosecutors seemed “egregious”.

He said, “They evidently knew that their child was troubled” and went out of their way for him to be armarmed.