In February 2024, the Oakland County Court in Michigan, the United States, issued a controversial and major criminal verdict on the Oxford High School Shooting incident that caused 4 deaths and 7 serious injuries 3 years ago Under the unanimous resolution of the jury, Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the 15-year-old gunman in the Oxford High School ** case, was convicted of 4 counts of negligent death for serious neglect of her son's criminal plan (manslaughter) is guilty and faces up to 60 years in prison.
Jennifer's guilty verdict is the first time in the history of American justice that the parents of minors in the school ** incident have been investigated for criminal responsibility and sentenced to a felony.
The supporting opinion held that the defendant not only neglected to take care of him, but also purchased a handgun for his son when he knew that he was mentally unstable and at risk of injury, and was suspected of concealing information about his son's gun possession from the school before the incident, so he was absolutely responsible for the tragic outcome. Skeptics are worried that the penal logic of the failure to educate parents and the fault of parents in this case is not only unfair to vulnerable parents who are struggling with pressure from all sides, but may also have a disturbing chain effect on American society.
The Oxford High School ** case that the tragedy warning sounded many times, but failed to prevent it
On November 30, 2021, more than 1,800 teachers and students in Oxford High School are stepping up their classes in the middle of winter in Oakland County, Michigan, USA, hoping to catch up with the class schedule before the final exams. But Ethan Crumbley, a sophomore in high school, was distraught.
In the early morning geometry quiz, Ethan not only did not solve a single question, but the question paper was full of irrelevant graffiti, which made the teacher frown, but he looked at it with a creepy because Ethan drew a pistol, a bullet, a portrait of a person lying in a pool of blood with bullet holes on his body, and a few scattered words on the test paper:
The world is dead, rivers of blood are flowing, my life is useless, who will save me! Those thoughts lingered in my headIn addition to temporarily isolating Ethan from other students, the tutor urgently requested Ethan's mother Jennifer (43 years old at the time) and father James Crumbley (45 years old at the time) to come to the school to deal with it. The counselor determined that the 15-year-old was visibly suicidal through the evaluation process, but Ethan told the teacher that he had been depressed in recent months due to COVID-19 infection and the death of a loved one, and he kept emphasizing that he was just expressing his emotions casually and assured that he had no other intentions.
Around 10:30 a.m., the Clumburies finally arrived at school. According to the tutor, Ethan's father was mostly silent during the talks, but his mother was very strong and stubborn, and showed a strong sense of defensiveness. Jennifer did not believe that her son was suicidal, and when the school recommended that the Crumbres should take Ethan to seek professional help immediately, she even refused, insisting that I must go back to the office immediately, and that we are not available today and cannot take my son to the doctor.
This emergency parent-teacher meeting ended hastily in only 15 minutes. The tutor reluctantly took Ethan back to the classroom, and the Clumburys left in a hurry. However, before the two left, they did not disclose key information about Ethan's gunfire graffiti to the school For the past few months, 15-year-old Ethan has been suffering from severe hallucinations and auditory hallucinations. Four days before the emergency mentoring meeting, James bought a Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistol for his son as a Christmas present for Ethan. Three days before the incident, Jennifer also took her son to the shooting range to practice her gun, and used this newly arrived gift to shoot more than 100 rounds of ammunition. The day before the incident, the teacher found in class that Ethan was using his mobile phone to search for information on how to buy bullets, but Jennifer, who received the school's notification, sent a text message to her son afterwards: Haha, I'm not angry, but you have to learn that you won't be caught next time. 」
In fact, the Sig Sauer pistol was in Ethan's bag at the time, but the parents did not inform the school of Ethan's recent gun ownership, and the tutor did not search Ethan's belongings.
Two hours later, during the lunch break, Ethan walked into the toilet with a backpack, walked into the school building with a loaded ** at 12:51, and shot at hundreds of students who were finishing their lunch break, and in just 4 minutes of shooting, Ethan killed 4 classmates and seriously injured 7 teachers and students. He calmly ran out of 32 rounds, then returned to the toilet and, when the police arrived to surround him, surrendered rather cooperatively.
Although Ethan, who was arrested with his hands tied, was only 15 years old when he committed the crime, because this case not only caused the death of many minors, but also caused a large-scale ** incident against the school, the Oakland County prosecutor also asked the teenage gunman for a heavy sentence for multiple first-degree ** and terrorism crimes. In the end, Ethan himself pleaded guilty to all charges against the prosecution. He was sentenced in December 2023 to the most severe sentence for a juvenile criminal offender in the United States: life imprisonment without parole.
However, while Ethan is sure that he will spend the rest of his life in prison, the Oxford High School ** case has aroused a high degree of controversy and concern in American society until 2024 due to another decision of the prosecutor in charge of the prosecutor Karen McDonald: In addition to the gunman himself being asked for a heavy sentence, Ethan's parents Jennifer and James were also arrested and prosecuted by the prosecutor for manslaughter In the United States, where major campus cases are frequently reported, this is the first time in history The parents of the underage gunman were held criminally responsible.
What happened to an ordinary American family under the epidemic Clumbry's family?
The town of Oxford, located 48 kilometers north of Detroit, is an ordinary town with a population of less than 3,500 people, but the town's Oxford High School has more than 1,800 students, which is the educational and social core of the neighboring town. According to residents, the people of Oxford are known for their friendliness and warmth, and the residents are very close to each other, and every high school ball game and school celebration are community events in which the townspeople actively participate, but the Crumbury family of three rarely interacts with their neighbors in the town. 」
The Clumbury family is headed by their mother, Jennifer, 46, who is a Michigan native who grew up in Oakland County and is familiar with the Oxford area. In 2005, Jennifer married James Clumbley, a Florida man who was two years older than her and had previously had a marriage with two children, and the two gave birth to their only son Ethan the following year, and returned to Michigan in 2011, and the family has since settled in Oxfordtown, and Jennifer, who works for a real estate agency, is responsible for the family's finances.
According to the court description of the prosecuting prosecutor, McDonald, the Clumbury family was financially moderate, but the couple did not get along, and often quarreled seriously over family expenses; The two are also very indifferent to their neighbors, who have complained on several occasions about the dirty stench caused by the Clumbury family's pet defecation and neglect to tidy up the house. But in addition, most of the neighbors have a positive impression of Ethan, who made a big mistake in the future, as shy, introverted, rarely talking, but polite and friendly.
In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 epidemic spread throughout the United States, and the ordinary life of the Clumbley family was severely impacted. Oxford High School was closed on a large scale due to the epidemic prevention policy, but under the remote teaching mode, Ethan, who had just entered the first year of high school, had quite serious adjustment problems; At the same time, James, who was originally a salesman, was also unemployed due to the epidemic and transferred to a delivery boy, the financial situation of the family of three fell into embarrassment, and the quarrel between the couple became more and more fierce.
During the pandemic, the Clumbleys' marriage was on the verge of collapse, Jennifer had an extramarital affair, and when she returned home, she would directly confront James in front of her son, arguing about divorce and infidelity. As a result, Jennifer spends less and less time at home, and in addition to work, she is quite enthusiastic about her favorite equestrian activities; But at the same time, Ethan, who had been isolated at home for a long time and constantly suffered from the negative emotions of his parents, began to show the first symptoms of mental instability. According to the communication information collected by the prosecution and Ethan's diary, Ethan developed symptoms of auditory and visual hallucinations in early 2021, and he began to have a strong sense of insecurity about being alone, and constantly complained to his mother that there were ghosts in the house and that he was harassed by demons.
In the text log, Ethan began to cry to his mother that he was constantly hearing demonic voices or being haunted by evil spirits, and that he was clearly aware of the possibility that he might have mental problems or illnesses, and repeatedly begged his parents to take me to the doctor and that I needed a counselor to help me, but the Clumburys never took their son's distress signals seriously.
Jennifer has repeatedly complained to her colleagues that my son is weird, but whenever Ethan has symptoms, the couple will only feed Ethan sleeping pills and sedatives, and even mock her son's hallucinations to his face, believing that it is just the result of too many video games played by adolescent boys. But in fact, as the hallucination symptoms worsened, Ethan also experienced symptoms such as severe insomnia, emotional depression, and even seeking extremely violent sensory stimulation. In his diary and cellphone videos, Ethan began documenting the violence of killing small animals and storing animal carcasses in his home, which he claimed was the result of his own spirit succumbing to the instigation of the devil. After the summer of 2021, Ethan wrote in his diary many times that he would "attack the school" and "kill everyone", and began to draft a plan for the school strafing.
I have to kill people, kill people in school. * After the incident, the police found a web browsing record of Ethan's hundreds of eyewitnesses and modus operandi of the campus ** incident in the days before the incident, several diaries, which had been planned several months earlier, and a confession video recorded the night before the crime.
The first victim I want to kill has to be a beautiful schoolgirl, the kind of girl who has a bright look and a bright future at a glance, so that they can suffer in hell like me. In the diary, Ethan on the one hand is extremely meticulous in formulating a criminal plan, including: how to persuade his father to buy guns and ammunition on behalf of his minor self after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, on the grounds of advance gifts; The time of the crime must be chosen when the students are all in the corridor to achieve the highest kill rate; ** The victim must have a beautiful girl to exaggerate the news shock, so lying ambushed in front of the bathroom is the most likely way to attack; After the bullet is fired, he is not prepared to resist and will quietly surrender to the police who arrive at him, because he knows that the living gunman will bring more hatred and fear.
But in the same diary, Ethan's other words show a completely different signal:
It's painful, who is coming to stop me! There's no way I can stop the voice in my head that keeps drawing ** thoughts! 」According to the forensic psychiatric records, until November 30, the morning of Ethan's parents being called to the school for an emergency interview, Ethan had been expecting someone to find out about the situation or to find out the bullet-ridden semi-automatic pistol in his school bag, but these direct or indirect distress signals were never picked up by his parents, who were under the same roof; As a result, the Clumburys became the first parents in the history of American justice to face a criminal felony for their son's large-scale crimes.
The criminal responsibility of the head of the school gunman's house? For the first time, U.S. prosecutors have prosecuted parents guilty of negligence
The defendant who is a parent, even if he gives a little more to his son, can prevent the whole tragedy from happening. During the trial, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Michael Donald, repeatedly emphasized his anger at the campus ** case: I am angry, and I must be angry As a mother of five, as a prosecutor, and as a citizen of Oakland County, I am really angry about the tragedy. 」
Prior to the Oxford High School case, the U.S. judicial system had never held the parents or legal guardians of the underage gunman criminally responsible for the felony of causing death by negligence. In the vast majority of cases, only the victim files a civil claim against the perpetrator's parents or the relevant negligent person.
However, after reviewing the evidence of the crime, the prosecution determined that the Clumbury couple bore unshirkable and extremely serious criminal responsibility for the occurrence of the Oxford High School ** case, mainly based on:
As parents, the Clumbury couple did not fulfill their parenting duties, provided necessary medical assistance, and deliberately ignored their son Ethan's repeated calls for help, which eventually led to the ** incident, which resulted in the death of four innocent students.
The firearm used by Ethan was purchased and registered in James's name, and in the known evidence, Jennifer was the last adult to possess the pistol, but neither parent properly kept the firearms and ammunition, so that minors who were not qualified to use it could easily obtain and kill people.
The day before and on the day of the incident, the school took the initiative to notify Ethan of high-risk firearms-related behaviors (searching for information on the purchase of bullets, school ** graffiti on the homework paper), but the parents refused to send him to the hospital, and did not take the initiative to mention Ethan's experience in buying guns and shooting firearms within a week.
At the time of the shooting, the Clumburys, who were alerted to the incident, did not take the initiative to rush to school or confirm their son's safety, Jennifer first sent a text message urging his son not to do anything stupid, and James rushed home as soon as possible to confirm whether the pistol given to Ethan was still there. Their instincts showed that the Clumburys had recognized that their son was at risk of harming others, but they had never reported or warned the school authorities, including when the parents arrived at school that morning.
*After the case, Mr. and Mrs. Clumbley absconded in fear of crime, including withdrawing their son's bank account, deleting family contact records and text messages without reason, buying multiple disposable mobile phones but refusing to receive notification of the case and missing contact, moving out of their home in Oxford Town without warning and taking refuge in renting a house in Detroit through relatives and friends.
Prosecutors believe that Jennifer's negligence caused the death penalty mainly because she was aware of the potential risk that Ethan posed to the safety of the school, but failed to fulfill her legal obligation to supervise her son and prevent her son from killing and injuring others. Moreover, before the November 30 case, Jennifer had accompanied her son on November 27 and carried the Sig Sauer pistol used in the crime to a nearby shooting range to shoot live ammunition This is the record of the last use of the pistol before the crime, but Jennifer, as the last legal adult user of the gun, could not prove that she had fulfilled her duty of keeping the firearm; So when the gun was subsequently taken by Ethan and four people were killed at school, Jennifer's gross negligence in mishandling the firearm met the criminal definition of negligent death.
In the course of the courtroom, a piece of evidence presented by the prosecution in Ethan's diary chapter in the months leading up to the crime also served as a background profile for the prosecution's assertion that the Clumburies must be held criminally responsible for the case.
This morning, I woke up to my mother's terrible growl, angrily cursing why we had no dime left in our family, and why the family was cornered by bills and debts, and these negative feelings only reinforced my motivation to kill everyone, to shoot schools, or to do something big. In his diary, Ethan recorded that his parents always argued about income, debts, extramarital affairs and divorce in front of him, but never took seriously the physical and mental problems he constantly raised, his parents lived their own lives, the family ran out of food from time to time, he did not necessarily have three meals, and his parents ignored me, and there was no longer any happiness, optimism or hope in my body, and I felt that my existence was just a burden to my parents. 」
As long as you make a single pass, you may be able to save many lives. I feel like ** has completely taken over my heart, I used to enjoy it, but now I don't want to continue to fall, **. On another page of the diary, Ethan wrote:
I needed help, but my parents couldn't hear my distress signal, no matter how much they shouted, no one helped me, and I could only let my heart fall into an infinite cycle of pain and sorrow. 」Defense: Tragic negligence is not the responsibility of one person, why hit the imperfect motherAlthough prosecutor McDonald's criminal accountability, although Jennifer and James were each charged with four counts of negligent death, why was the first person responsible to face the trial was the mother Jennifer, instead of the father James, who bought the pistol for the crime for his son, and finally went to the school to interview his father, who also appeared in the tutoring room?
The prosecution said that this was because Jennifer had a higher proportion of responsibility in the ** case For example, the notice of abnormal student behavior issued by the school has Jennifer as the main contact; Ethan's previous initiative to seek spiritual ** family dialogues is also dominated by mothers; Coupled with the fact that Jennifer was the last adult holder of Ethan's crimes, her failure to prove that she had fulfilled her duty to keep the firearms, and her failure to mention Ethan's experience with a gun to the tutor on the day of the crime made Jennifer more obviously and seriously negligent in this case.
However, Jennifer's defense lawyer Shannon Smith believes that the Oakland County prosecutor's criminal prosecution strategy against Jennifer is intended to smear Jennifer as a hopelessly unfit mother, for example, during the interrogation, the prosecution kept asserting that when the son was close to a mental breakdown and asked his parents for help, the defendant, as a mother, would rather ride a horse on the ranch or have an extramarital affair with his lover, but did not actively respond to his son's signals for help. But this personal emotional information has nothing to do with judging Jennifer's care and care for Ethan, it is only a moral disparagement that the prosecution deliberately hinted at in front of the jury. The defense argued that Jennifer and Ethan's mother-son interaction had always been very close, and that even if Jennifer was not a typical good mother who fits the perfect image, she was already an ordinary mother who did her best to take care of her son's safe upbringing.
Veteran journalist Lisa Miller also documented her insightful investigation into the tragedy of the Clumbury family in a special column for New York Magazine. Miller writes that although Jennifer's predatory personality may seem bitter and unpleasant to the people of Oxford, she has no record of abusing or deliberately hurting Ethan, and the family used to be happy, enjoying camping, boating, and regular weekly card games at the community center as much as the average middle-class American family. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Clumbury family's life was under unbearable stress due to the halving of income, isolation and the sudden death of a loved one.
Taking the "gross negligence" of ignoring Ethan's pleas for help and asking his parents to take him to a psychiatrist as an example, the reason why Jennifer did not actively respond to Ethan's request for medical treatment may be influenced by the traditional tough guy values in rural America, which makes Jennifer think that Ethan's problem is only a temporary condition for adolescent boys, and it can be improved with time and exercise; On the other hand, it may be related to the actual allocation of medical resources Because when Ethan hallucinated at the same time, James, as a father, has been unemployed for a long time, and the family can only rely on Jennifer's real estate salary.
In addition to the family's financial concerns about medical expenses, local attitudes towards mental health care also have an impact. In Michigan, for example, since the 1990s, the state** has drastically reduced its investment in psychiatric health care resources on the grounds of fiscal austerity, resulting in the closure of more than 75% of publicly-funded psychiatric clinics, while the remaining units have to face overabundance**, outpatient clinics, and even out-of-control demand for more than half a year during the epidemic; Even in the Oxford High School counselling room, where the Crumbres were interviewed, there were only four professional tutors for the school's 1,800 students, who were exhausted just by digesting the students' conditions, and these tutors often had to substitute for teachers during the epidemic to fill the vacancies of teachers who were unable to teach due to the epidemic. Therefore, seeing a doctor or seeking medical attention is not an easy decision for the Clumbury family to act on immediately with a simple reflex.
Smith kept emphasizing that until the moment of the incident, Ethan had no obvious violent tendencies at home or at school. Although Ethan had brutally tortured and killed small animals before committing the crime, these experiences were not discovered by his family and teachers; In an interview in the counseling room two hours before the incident, the counselor on duty only judged that Ethan had suicidal and self-mutilating tendencies, and the school also did not realize that Ethan's classroom graffiti was actually a notice that he was going to shoot his classmates.
At the same time, the reason why the school did not search Ethan's schoolbag that day with the pistol in his possession, or insisted that the parents should take Ethan home immediately, was also because Ethan had not violated school rules in the past, so in terms of risk assessment and disciplinary procedures, there was no immediate suspension In other words, Jennifer, as a mother, was not the only one who did not notice that Ethan was wrong, or foresaw that he might make a big mistake.
Smith argues that although Jennifer is not a perfect mother, she has done her best to keep her son safe during her 15 years of parenting with Ethan. Smith emphasized that every mother's reflex must be protective of the child
The defendant is far from being a perfect model mother, but on the road to raising children, who among us can guarantee that it is perfect, right, and absolutely infallible? 」However, the defendant's argument was ultimately unable to make the jury empathize. In the first-instance verdict on February 6, 2024, the 12 jurors finally unanimously found that Jennifer was guilty of all four counts of negligence causing death, and the full sentencing will be announced on April 9. Under Michigan's criminal law, the maximum penalty for causing death by negligence is 15 years in prison, and prosecutors have the power to determine whether Jennifer's four convictions are being served at the same time, but the defendant may still face up to 60 years in prison for one crime and one penalty combined.
The mother of the gunman faces a maximum sentence of 60 years, what are the debates and controversies in the American legal community?
For the first time in the United States, a parent was found guilty of a large-scale school case committed by his child, which immediately detonated the attention and controversy of all parties, and the biggest and most discussed topic was the potential impact of this case on U.S. gun control policy.
According to the K-12 School Shooting Database, U.S. school events have worsened significantly since COVID-19. In 2023, for example, there will be 346 campus incidents in the United States, resulting in at least 71 deaths; Compared to 2020, the number of incidents has skyrocketed by almost 3 times, and the number of deaths has also increased to 23 times.
Although the sharp increase in campus cases and large-scale incidents has continuously stimulated progressives to put forward demands for tightening gun control, this issue involves the traditional dispute over gun ownership rights in the United States, and in addition to the Second Amendment, which is regarded as a sacred cow by conservatives, gun interest groups and the deteriorating law and order situation have also caused the debate on gun control to fall into an unresolved political deadlock for a long time. Therefore, the successful prosecution and conviction of Jennifer Clumbley in this case has also made the gun control groups in the United States quite excited, and even believe that this case may become another breakthrough solution to the gun control problem in the United States.
The verdict of the parents of criminally convicted gunmen could have a bigger impact than everyone thinks, Nick Suplina, vice president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun control NGO, told The Washington Post
The concept of the verdict's warning to society is very simple: keep your guns in check, and as long as you lock your guns, you can prevent more children from dying for no reason. 」The legal support also advocates that when major gun control bills continue to be blocked in Congress, criminal prosecution of parental responsibilities may further warn and encourage ordinary families to take personal gun safety procedures seriously, and the purpose is not to deter every gun owner with harsh laws, but to make the concept of carelessness in the custody of firearms a felony through criminal punishment cases, so as to restrain ordinary people from taking chances, and thus achieve the goal of improving the safety literacy of social gun use.
However, the questioning opinion believes that there are still contradictions and controversies that have not yet been answered in the prosecution process of the Oxford ** case, one of which is: although ** himself is a minor, he already has a certain degree of responsibility at the age of 15, and when the prosecution initiated a criminal prosecution against 15-year-old Ethan, it asserted that his crime was serious and the crime plan was detailed enough to prove that he was sane and clear, although ** was only 15 years old, the cruelty of his criminal methods was obviously beyond the level of society for minors, so the sentence Ethan must be ** Life imprisonment is served in prison. However, since ** has been regarded as an adult conviction, is there still criminal liability for negligence causing death under the premise of the original guardianship negligence of the parents?
For example, Evan Bernick, a law professor at Northern Illinois University, and Randy Zelin, a criminal law defense lawyer who teaches at Cornell University, have expressed concerns about the Washington Post, arguing that if the responsibility for children's crimes is extended to parents, families from poor classes, people of color, or marginalized groups, It is likely that it will be the most serious, and this will not only further amplify the already serious racial barriers and socio-economic class problems in the United States, but may also make raising the next generation a huge risk that outweighs the losses.
I don't think I'm a failed parent, but it's come to me I don't know, I guess I'm a real failure, I don't know how to tell the story, I don't know if I'm not good enough, but I think I really messed up at some point to make my family fall apart into this kind of field. 」At the trial, Jennifer was dismayed and said in court that she had never found her son potentially harming anyone, but that I'd now rather Ethan kill us than anyone else. 」
According to court records, Jennifer and James have never seen or been in contact with Ethan since the Clumbrys**. And after being sentenced to life in prison without parole at the end of 2023, Ethan once again apologized to all victims for the big mistake he made in court, and he emphasized that he did become a ** person when he committed the crime:
But this is not the result I really want, and I will continue to repent for the rest of my life in prison.Hotspot Engine ProgramMore than two months later, when Ethan's mother was also found guilty by a jury, she simply shook her head gently in frustration and sadly left the courtroom with her head bowed and silent amid the clanging of handcuffs and shackles.