James Crumbley, the father of a Michigan school shooter, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday.

In a separate trial, the shooter’s mother, Jennifer Crumbley, was also found guilty by a jury.

School Shooter’s Mother Convicted Of Involuntary Manslaughter

The convictions mark the first U.S. parents to be charged in a mass school shooting committed by their child.

Ethan Crumbley’s parents were accused of failing to secure a gun at home and not addressing their son’s signs of mental illness.

WATCH:

From the Associated Press:

The verdicts — one each for the four victims — were read around 7:15 p.m. at the end of a full day of deliberations in Oakland County court.

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James Crumbley, 47, who heard the outcome through headphones because of a hearing problem, slowly shook his head from side to side as the jury foreman said “guilty.” A sheriff’s deputy removed a dress tie from his neck, shackled him at the waist and returned him to jail.

Family of some of the fallen students wept quietly and gripped each other’s hands in the second row of the courtroom.

Later at a news conference, county prosecutor Karen McDonald stood next to them and praised their “unwavering courage” through extraordinary tragedy and grief.

“This verdict does not bring back their children, but it does mark a moment of accountability and will hopefully be another step to address and end gun violence,” McDonald said.

The Associated Press noted that James Crumbley and his wife each face a possible minimum sentence of as much as 10 years in prison when they return to court April 9th.

Many people wonder if the cases set a legal precedent that could lead to more parents charged for crimes committed by their children.

Per NBC News:

The Michigan prosecutor who won convictions against the mother and father of teenage school shooter Ethan Crumbley said Friday her goal was not to ensure that the sins of other criminally convicted children are visited on their parents in court, but to prevent further gun violence.

“I hope it leads to more prevention of gun violence,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said. “I hope it leads to people taking more responsibility. I don’t want a situation where a lot of prosecutors are charging people or parents for things that their children did, or are doing.”

But the twin convictions of James and Jennifer Crumbley — the first parents to be held criminally responsible for a mass shooting committed by their child — create a legal precedent that could lead to prosecutors to bring more cases against parents for the actions of their children.

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Lawyers are “trained to argue cases on precedent,” Ekow Yankah, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told NBC News. “And I can see prosecutors using this in cases that won’t get this kind of national attention.”

“This case was particularly terrible and had a unique set of facts,” Yankah said of the 2021 mass shooting in a Detroit suburb that left four Oxford High School students dead. “I don’t know to what extent it will open the floodgates to similar kinds of prosecutions, but precedent has its own power and law.”

 

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