Could parents of ALL criminal kids now face prison? As Ethan Crumbley's mom and ... trends now

The manslaughter conviction of school shooter Ethan Crumbley's mom and dad has created a legal precedent which could leave the parents of killer kids open to prosecution, experts say.

And, some warn, the landmark case also creates an environment where the parents of all criminal children can be held liable for the crimes - no matter how serious.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were jailed on Tuesday for at least ten years each after a jury found them criminally responsible for the massacre carried out by their son.

Ethan, then 15, murdered four children at Oxford High School in Michigan in November 2021. He was sentenced in December 2023 to life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors charged Crumbley's parents with manslaughter and claimed they missed glaring red flags about his murderous urges, ignored his pleas for help and also supplied the gun. In finding the pair guilty, jurors essentially agreed the massacre would have been avoided if they were better parents.

Jennifer and James Crumbley were, without doubt, terrible parents. But experts say the legal precedent could now influence cases where a mom or dad's inability to parent is far less clear.

'One might think that with such a painful and unlikely event — and the way prosecution treated [the Crumbleys] as such remarkably negligent parents — that we just wouldn't see a case like this again,' said University of Michigan law professor Ekow Yankah.

'But I do think the thing that worries legal experts is: We know that law lives in precedent, and once you have a precedent, it's the most natural instinct for a prosecutor to use that precedent,' Yankah told Al Jazeera.

The case against Ethan Crumbley's parents has created a set of challenging questions for prosecutors, attorneys and scholars.

What is the threshold for holding parents directly responsible for their children's crimes? Should this case be used to look again at the parents of other school shooters? Does it minimize the Ethan Crumbley's culpability for his own horrific actions? 

It also gives a new angle to the debate about gun control. Prosecutors say it serves as a warning to other parents who own firearms. Critics say it is a distraction from the fundamental issue that children in America can access guns far too easily.

Parents have been charged previously for failing to secure weapons which were then accessed by their children. In December, a mother was jailed on child neglect charges after her six-year-old son took a gun from home and shot his teacher.

But the Crumbley case marks the first time that a school shooter's parents have been held

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