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Sunday, December 10, 2023
By Michael Nichols
Categories: Michael J. Nichols
It was an interesting moment in the sentencing hearing for Ethan Crumbley. Crumbley is the shooter in the Oxford school massacre on November 30, 2021. As reported by the Detroit Free Press, Crumbley made the following statement to Judge Kwame Rowe during his sentencing hearing:
"We are all here because of me today, what I did ... because of what I chose to do. I could not stop myself," Crumbley said, adding: "My parents did not know what I planned to do, they are not at fault."
"THEY ARE NOT AT FAULT."
In theory, Crumbley was supposed to cooperate with prosecutors if he pleaded guilty and would get the opportunity to ask for a sentence that included parole - in other words a term of years. It almost seems as if he resigned himself to a life without parole sentence and he literally asked the judge to give the survivors "what they want" and lock him up without the key.
The statement that he made appears to absolve his parents of any blame for his conduct. His parents are charged with involuntary manslaughter, each one faces a separate trial. Will the prosecutors in those trials call the shooter to testify against his mom and his dad? Will either defense attorney call the killer to testify on behalf of his respective parent? These are now questions worth pondering if you are following the Oxford School prosecutions.
The charging theory against the parents is novel: that they engaged in decision-making that was grossly negligent parenting and that they knew or should have known that the decisions that they made either created or increased the danger that their son would commit the murders.
It seems pretty likely that one or both of the parents are going to go to trial - this is a trial that will be followed around the world because it is the first time that the parents of a mass school shooter have been charged in the crimes.
Of note: Judge Kwame Rowe is a graduate of the Cooley Law School in Lansing and one of the younger and more recent appointments by Governor Whitmer - August 2021. Judge Rowe appeared to eschew some of the judicial grandstanding that has occurred in highly-publicized sentencing hearings in the United States over the last several years.