When Tragedy Strikes: Should Parents Be Held Criminally Responsible for Their Child's School Shooting?

Blog Post | 113 KY. L. J. ONLINE | November 13, 2024

When Tragedy Strikes: Should Parents Be Held Criminally Responsible for Their Child's School Shooting?

By: Nathan Clark, Staff Editor, Vol. 113 

No amount of restorative justice will ever be able to compensate for the loss and grief caused by school shootings. However, the continuous growth of school shooting across the nation has pushed lawmakers, public officials, and prosecutors to look for new ways to put an end to the horror being sown in our schools.[1] One such novel way is to prosecute the parents for their child’s crime.[2] Until April, when prosecutor Karen McDonald convicted Jennifer and James Crumbley of involuntary manslaughter in Michigan, this was unheard of.[3] Now, Colin Gray, the father of a school shooter in Georgia, has been convicted of murder for his son’s actions.[4]

This new approach to bringing justice and potentially preventing these shootings, is a divisive issue with skeptics on both sides of the fence. Proponents of this emerging concept believe that parents who  recognize the warning signs  their children have shown, and negligently “failed to intervene” should be treated as part of the crime even though they may not have pulled the trigger themselves.[5] However, others have been apprehensive to this approach because they believe that this method doesn’t actually deal with the problem, but instead just provides a temporary fix to a problem that needs much more regulatory and lawmaking efforts. They worry this could set a precedent with unintended consequences.[6]

Before the approach to preventing school shootings by way of prosecuting parents, there have been a few different methods that states have used in order to minimize the risk. Such methods include child-access-prevention laws and safe-storage laws.[7] There has been “supportive evidence” suggesting that these laws, which limit the access of firearms to children, can help to prevent many of the tragedies that continue to sweep the nation.[8] University of Michigan Law Professor, Ekow Yankah believes that regulations and legislation like these are the proper way to combat school violence and that the “extraordinary prosecutions” are merely a retroactive fix that could affect only minorities and poor families.[9] However, neither Michigan nor Georgia had any such legislation in place before the recent events which led to the prosecution of parents.[10] The lack of these laws are what gave prosecutors the ability to stretch their states’ statutes and prosecute parents.[11]

The “deterrent value” gained from this new approach is still significant, even in the face of criticism.[12] The conviction of the Crumbley parents sent a strong message to all parents across the country.[13] The prosecutor there, Karen McDonald, won a critical charge for involuntary manslaughter based off of the negligence in noticing their child’s propensity for violence and purchasing the weapon he then used to murder his peers.[14] The morning of Ethan’s killing spree, the mother had been called into the school because he had shown explicit signs of sadism.[15] However, his parents disregarded this blatant showing by Ethan and returned to work.[16] In addition, Jennifer purchased and taught Ethan how to use the gun that he would later slay classmates with, without ever implementing safety protocols for his use.[17] Further, Jennifer texted her son “Ethan, don’t do it.”[18] This clear suspicion echoes the notice that a parent should act upon to prevent their child from committing such heinous crimes, which is also evident in the recent Colin Gray case from Georgia.[19] There, prosecutors expanded the charges to murder because Mr. Gray’s negligence was “directly connected to his son’s actions and ‘allow[ed] him to possess a weapon.’”[20] Once again ignoring even more critical signs, Mr. Gray also bought his son the weapon that was used to massacre students, with no safety provisions in place.[21] Both cases illustrate the failure of a parent to take action against their child with obvious signs that should prompt such precaution, and even acting against precaution – enabling their child’s crime.[22]

Preventative legislature may be helpful in minimizing the possibility of mass shootings by children, but when there is such gross negligence as there is in these two recent cases, the parents have been complicit in their child’s atrocious crime and deserve a punishment for their own actions. By enabling their sons to commit these crimes through ignorance of their children’s mental health issues, purchasing the weapon used in the mass murders, and failure to keep the gun safe, both parents have shown what should be considered elements for involuntary manslaughter and murder in some cases.[23] I believe that prosecuting parents is the best way to approach this horrible issue. As someone who has been affected by such a tragedy, I urge more states to implement this new type of prosecution.

In Memory of Preston Cope

[1] See, e.g., Alex Matthews, Amy O’Kruk & Annette Choi, School Shootings in the US: Fast Facts, CNN: Crime + Justice, https://www.cnn.com/us/school-shootings-fast-facts-dg/index.html (last updated Nov. 8, 2024, 9:24 AM) (“[R]ecent years saw a stark increase in school shootings, with 2021, 2022 and 2023 all setting records since at least 2008. There were at least 82 incidents in 2023, but 2022 was one of the deadliest years, with 46 fatalities…”); Sam Cabral, Tough New Test of Parental Responsibility in Georgia Shooting Case, BBC News (Sept. 6, 2024), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdkvk1pv44o# (“[T]he emerging concept of punishing parents after school shootings reflects broader frustration around US gun violence and, in the absence of regulatory reform, the inability to curb the country's unrelenting series of firearm incidents.”).

[2] See Ed White, James Crumbley, Who Bought Gun Used by Son to Kill 4 Students, Guilty of Manslaughter in Michigan, AP News, https://apnews.com/article/oxford-high-school-shooting-james-crumbley-d13192e4057ec00836e4ce99c17bd375 (last updated Mar. 14, 2024, 9:53 PM) (discussing the first parents to be charged for a mass shooting).

[3] John Woodrow Cox, Guilty: Inside the High-Risk, Historic Prosecution of a School Shooter’s Parents, Wash. Post: Deep Reads (July 8, 2024, 6:00 AM), https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/michigan-prosecutors-crumbley-parents-oxford-school-shooting/.

[4] See Aja Romano, The Precedent-Setting Push to Hold Parents Responsible for School Shootings, Vox (Sept. 6, 2024, 4:00 PM), https://www.vox.com/policy/370539/apalachee-shooter-father-charged-crumbleys-colin-gray (discussing the precedent that is now set on parental liability in school shootings).

[5] Cabral, supra note 1; see also id. (explaining the arguments for prosecuting parents).

[6] See Cabral, supra note 1 (discussing expert opinions on what these charges will likely do for reform).

[7] See Andrew Morral, Opinion, Will Charging Parents Help Prevent School Shootings?, Atlanta J.-Const. (Sept. 23, 2024), https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-will-charging-parents-help-prevent-school-shootings/73DYM7MKYNDZXD2PFQ4IWUZYKI/.

[8] Id. (discussing the research and data backing the legislative attempts at preventing mass shootings in different states and the arguments that these laws help to prevent access for youth and stop school shootings in a better way than prosecuting parents).

[9] Cabral, supra note 1 (discussing unintended consequences of prosecuting parents and the alternatives that Professor Yankah thinks would work better).

[10] Morral, supra note 7.

[11] Cabral, supra note 1.

[12] Nadine El-Bawab, Could Charging Parents of Shooters Be a Deterrent for Gun Violence?, ABC News (Sept. 7, 2024, 4:22 PM), https://abcnews.go.com/US/charging-parents-shooters-deterrent-gun-violence/story?id=113487186#:~:text=In%20separate%20trials%2C%20the%20Crumbleys,held%20accountable%2C%22%20Suplia%20said (discussing the “deterrent value” in these prosecutions, and the message they send).

[13] Id.

[14] Cox, supra note 3.

[15] Id. (discussing the note that Ethan Crumbley drew in his notebook the day of the shooting that read, “Blood everywhere” and “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me,” along with a depiction of a person shot dead. Instead of taking this obvious warning sign seriously, the Crumbleys refused to take Ethan home because she had “work demands.” He then went on to kill multiple people).

[16] Id.

[17] Id. (discussing the safety lock that Karen McDonald showed the Jury and how it only took 10 seconds to lock it away safely).

[18] Id.

[19] Max Matza, Father of US School Shooting Suspect Charged with Murder, BBC News (Sept. 6, 2024), https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wj0vyl8xko.

[20] Id.; see also El-Bawab, supra note 12 (discussing how the FBI had shown up over a year before the fatal events and warned Mr. Gray of his son’s posts online about shooting up a school. Within that time before his son actually did what he posted about, Colin bought him an assault rifle, ignoring this obvious warning, which he ended up using to murder).

[21] El-Bawab, supra note 12.

[22] See Romano, supra note 4 (“The similarities between the Grays and the Crumbleys are eerie. In both cases, the parents allegedly ignored their son’s deteriorating mental health as well as signs he was experiencing violent fantasies. In both cases, the parents gifted their son a gun despite clear warning signs, and despite it being illegal in both states for minors to purchase the kinds of weapons they received. In both cases, authorities found evidence after the shooting that the shooter had kept writings expressing violent ideation.”).

[23] See Id. (discussing the three factors that the Michigan prosecutors argued).