An Unprecedented Verdict: Expanding Parental Liability for Children’s Violent Crimes

Respondeat superior is a Latin phrase translated as “let the master answer,” which allows for a master, principle, or employer to be held liable in civil court for actions committed by a servant, subordinate, or employee. This legal doctrine has long been restricted to tort law. However, in a recent groundbreaking criminal trial, a mother was found criminally liable for her actions that ultimately contributed to her teenage son’s intentional murder of four of his classmates at their high school. Weeks later, her husband also was convicted for his actions contributing to the deaths of their son’s classmates. Jennifer and James Crumbley’s convictions on four counts of involuntary manslaughter were the first ever trials and guilty verdicts of parents of a school shooter in the history of the United States. Now that there have been successful prosecutions for this offense, will parents’ actions or inactions regarding their children potentially lead to more trials of this kind? In short, will these convictions lead to more parents being held criminally liable for their children’s actions?

The Crime and the Charges

On November 30, 2021, in a suburb just north of Detroit, Michigan, Ethan Crumbley, age 15, removed a SIG Sauer handgun from his backpack and opened fire upon his classmates and teachers, in yet another horrific mass shooting at an American high school. Four students were killed, while six other students and one teacher were wounded during the attack. Shortly after police responded to the school, Ethan surrendered and was taken into custody. As there was no question of the shooter’s identity, Ethan Crumbley was charged with several counts of intentional murder and terrorism the day after the shooting. After a brief investigation of Ethan’s parents, the Oakland County District Attorney filed manslaughter charges against them both just two days later, marking the beginning of a brand-new theory of criminal responsibility. This documented the first time that parents of a school shooter had been criminally charged in connection with causing the deaths of the victims.

While Ethan was charged with intentional (or deliberate) conduct in relation to the killings, Jennifer and her husband, James, were charged with neglectful conduct that, at least partially, caused the deaths of the students that Ethan killed. The mens rea (state of mind) of negligence in relation to causing death can best be described as the parents’ willful ignorance of risks that a future harm would occur, the risks being Ethan’s behavior leading up to the crime and the future harm being the ultimate deaths of the victims. By willfully ignoring these risks of future harm exhibited in their son’s behavior, Jennifer and James Crumbley began to bear criminal responsibility for the future harm, which came to fruition in the form of their son committing a mass murder at his high school. Thus, the most significant allegation is that the parents’ grossly negligent conduct was a contributing factor in causing the deaths of the victims. In criminal law, there can be more than one cause of the harm, which is death in this case. To bear criminal responsibility, an offender’s conduct must simply be a substantial contributing factor and need not be the sole cause of harm. Therefore, under the law, actions committed by Ethan, Jennifer, and James Crumbley can together, and individually, be the substantial contributing causes of death to the victims. Finally, the parent-child relationship is one of very few relationships where a failure to act (an omission, per se) can support criminal liability under the law, as parents have a legal duty to exercise reasonable care of their minor children. As a result, to support the manslaughter charges against Jennifer and James Crumbley, the prosecution needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that leading up to the shooting, evidence existed and demonstrated that their actions and omissions in relation to their parenting of Ethan were contributing factors in causing the deaths of the four victims.

Conduct Prior to the Crime

The trial court record has established the factual basis of the general relationship and specific interactions between Jennifer and James Crumbley and their son in the months leading up to the attack. The following is a description of the most significant actions or omissions committed by Jennifer and James Crumbley that contributed to Ethan’s attack at the school. These facts have been substantiated by witness testimony and documentary evidence presented at one or both trials, as well as in the State of Michigan Court of Appeals’ opinion affirming sufficient evidence of causation existed to bind the defendants over for trial.

• Beginning seven months prior to the shooting, on numerous occasions, Ethan expressed to his parents, both verbally and in text messages, that he was experiencing hallucinations and severe paranoia. Specifically, he believed someone was lurking in their home while he was alone, that a demon was present in the home, and that he was deeply scared. Oftentimes, his parents ignored these messages and did not respond to him in any manner. At least once, Ethan texted his mother, “Can you at least text back[?]”
• During the same time frame, Ethan told his friend that he asked his parents to bring him to a doctor several times and that he told his parents about his hallucinations and about his belief that he was having a mental breakdown. Ethan further told his friend that his parents refused to seek help for him and that they gave him pills, laughed at him, and told him to “suck it up.” Ethan expressed to the same friend that his parents would be angry with him if he sought medical care on his own.
• Ethan kept a journal, which consisted of just 21 pages of written material. On each page, Ethan wrote about planning to commit a school shooting. He referenced his mental health symptoms when he noted that he “fully mentally lost it after years of fighting with my dark side.” Ethan also wrote that his parents refused to listen to him and refused his requests for help, and, specifically, his request for a therapist. In his own words, Ethan directly correlated his lack of receiving help with his planning of the school shooting. While no evidence exists that either parent actually read Ethan’s journal, there is evidence that his parents were aware he was writing in a journal in the days leading up to the attack.
• Just four days before the shooting, James brought Ethan to a gun shop and purchased the 9-millimeter SIG Sauer handgun, which Ethan ultimately used to commit the attack. Ethan posted photographs of the gun and a video of himself holding the gun on his Instagram account. Ethan referred to the gun as “my new beauty . . . SIG Sauer 9-millimeter” in the caption of his Instagram post. Jennifer was a follower of Ethan’s Instagram account and had the ability to see Ethan’s posts of the photograph of the gun, the video, and the caption.
• The following day, Jennifer brought Ethan to a gun range to practice firing the newly purchased weapon. Later that day, both Jennifer and Ethan posted photographs of their paper firing targets with bullet holes in them on each of their respective Instagram accounts. Ethan’s Instagram caption again referred to the gun as his own. In her Instagram post, Jennifer referred to the gun as Ethan’s “new Christmas present.”
• The day before the attack, Jennifer received a voicemail from Ethan’s school reporting that he was caught by a teacher looking at photographs of ammunition on his phone. Jennifer did not return contact to the school about it but did exchange text messages with Ethan, ultimately sending the following text message to him: “LOL [Laugh out loud]. I’m not mad. You have to learn not to get caught.”
• On the morning of the shooting, Jennifer and James Crumbley were both contacted by a school counselor, Shawn Hopkins, who requested their presence at the school after a teacher photographed Ethan’s math worksheet, on which Ethan drew what appeared to be a picture of a gun, a person with blood dripping from holes in the torso of the body, a pool of blood next to the body, and a laughing emoji. On the same worksheet, Ethan wrote the phrases: “Blood everywhere,” “the thoughts won’t stop,” “help me,” “my life is useless,” and “the world is dead.” Ethan’s parents arrived at the school and entered the office where Ethan and the counselor were already speaking about the troubling time Ethan was experiencing. Neither Jennifer nor James greeted, acknowledged, or touched Ethan. In fact, Jennifer did not speak to Ethan at all for the duration of the meeting. After a brief discussion, the counselor recommended that Jennifer and James take Ethan to a doctor or therapist immediately. Both parents declined to take Ethan out of school, citing the need to work, despite Jennifer having 12 banked hours of paid time-off. This was the first time that any parents refused this counselor’s recommendation to remove a child from the school building to get help. Just before leaving the meeting, James told Ethan that Ethan had people he could talk to, and he encouraged Ethan to write in his journal. No one searched Ethan’s backpack, which contained the gun and the journal at that time.
• The final journal entry had been written just the day before. In it, Ethan wrote that he had the gun and the ammunition and that the shooting would take place the following day. Ethan wrote “forgive me” in large letters.
• Less than two hours after the meeting concluded, Ethan committed the school shooting, killing four students, injuring several others, and terrorizing everyone else in the school.
• Within 30 minutes of receiving an alert from the school that an active shooter situation was occurring, James searched the family’s home for the SIG Sauer that he had purchased for Ethan, and both parents made statements (Jennifer to James, and James to a 911 operator) indicating that they believed Ethan was the shooter.
• A police search executed at the Crumbley family’s home revealed a gun safe with the three-digit combination set to 0-0-0. Two other guns, ammunition, and folding knives were recovered from the home.

People v. Jennifer Crumbley (Mich. Cir. Ct., Oakland Cnty. Feb. 6, 2024); People v. James Crumbley (Mich. Cir. Ct., Oakland Cnty. Mar. 14, 2024); People v. James Crumbley & People v. Jennifer Crumbley, Docket Nos. 362210 & 362211, 2023 WL 2617524 (Mich. Ct. App. Mar. 23, 2023) (unpublished).

The Trials

On October 24, 2022, Ethan Crumbley, then age 16, pleaded guilty to all charges filed against him, including four counts of first-degree murder and one count of terrorism. Significantly, at the time of his plea, Ethan admitted that he had asked his father to purchase the SIG Sauer gun for him and that he gave his father money towards the purchase. Ethan was subsequently sentenced to life in prison. Though Jennifer and James faced the same charges as each other, they were tried separately. On February 6, 2024, Jennifer Crumbley was convicted after a jury trial of four counts of involuntary manslaughter. James Crumbley was convicted of the same charges on March 14, 2024. In the state of Michigan, a conviction of involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 15 years of imprisonment.

While James did not testify, Jennifer chose to testify at her trial. After the above-described facts regarding her conduct prior to the attack were established by prosecution witnesses and other evidence, Jennifer took the stand and testified in her own defense. Her testimony culminated with her shocking declaration that she would not have done anything differently in the months leading up to the attack. Furthermore, during closing argument, Jennifer’s defense attorney argued to the jury that Jennifer never could have foreseen Ethan committing a school shooting. It is very likely that most parents could not possibly imagine their child opening fire on his or her peers and teachers in a school building, killing and injuring many of them. However, what most parents can foresee is that ignoring cries for help, ignoring red flags, disregarding commonly known symptoms of depression and other mental illnesses, and providing access to guns can lead to dangerous behavior, whether it occurs in the form of self-harm or harm to others.

Evidence supported the fact that Ethan never engaged in threatening or violent behavior towards others in the months leading up to the shooting, aside from the threats depicted on his math worksheet the morning of the attack. Nevertheless, even if Jennifer believed Ethan could only be a danger to himself, she still did not exercise reasonable care to protect Ethan from self-harm. She barely exercised care for Ethan at all; in fact, at times she even laughed at his cries for help. She did not contact a doctor or mental health professional for treatment or advice. She did not encourage prosocial behaviors for him. She continued to leave him alone for long periods of time when he was scared. She did not read his journal. She placed a gun in his hands and took him to a gun range to shoot it. She never locked the gun in a safe. The day of the attack, she chose to leave him in school after seeing his overt threats drawn on paper, and even after seeing his written words describing despair and loss of hope. She rebuffed the school staff when they asked her to take him immediately to a doctor. She never asked him where the gun was, and she did not search his backpack. How could she claim she could not foresee this danger? The risk factors of impending harm were glaringly present. But for her actions in this case, the victims would be alive. For her grossly negligent behavior, the jury concluded that she is criminally responsible for causing the deaths of Ethan’s schoolmates. The jury in James’ trial arrived at the same conclusion. On April 9, 2024, the presiding judge sentenced them both to 10 to 15 years.

History of Relevant Case Law

In the United States, there have been a relatively small number of cases where parents have been found criminally liable for the crimes of their children, but the cases are rare, and none bear any level of criminal responsibility for deaths that were intentionally caused by their children. An analysis of these cases shows that none of the parents’ convictions relate to causing injury or death. This means that prior to the verdict in Jennifer Crumbley’s case, no other parent has been found to be a contributing factor of causing death in an intentional murder committed by his or her child.

Regarding this line of cases, many states have somewhat relatable statutes for the offense of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, where a parent or guardian is alleged to have overtly helped or encouraged a minor child to commit a crime. Even less severe statutes exist for failing to supervise a minor, which can be substantiated by a minor child engaging in misconduct. Notably, these statutes are relatively low-level offenses, as they are far less severe in punishment than manslaughter statutes.

There have been a few recent cases that align more similarly with the theory of criminal responsibility used in the Crumbley case; however, the statutes that the parents faced are also significantly less severe than manslaughter. In 2023 in Virginia, a mother was convicted of a child neglect statute after her six-year-old son took a gun from the mother’s pocketbook, brought the gun to school in his backpack, and intentionally shot his teacher. The teacher survived but was seriously injured. In 2022 in Illinois, a father pleaded guilty to reckless conduct charges for sponsoring a gun application for his then-19-year-old son, which allowed the son to purchase a gun. The son then used that gun to shoot and kill seven people at a parade a couple of years later. The prosecution presented evidence that the father sponsored his son’s gun application knowing his son had violent tendencies. In 2018, a father was found guilty of illegal delivery of a firearm for returning an assault rifle to his adult son, who was previously determined to be mentally ill and had previous encounters with law enforcement. The son then used the AR-15-style weapon to kill four people and wound four others at a Waffle House restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee. Lastly, in 2016, a father was convicted of federal illegal firearms possession charges after purchasing multiple firearms while being the subject of a domestic violence court order restraining him from a former intimate partner. His 15-year-old son used one of the illegally purchased firearms to kill four students, wound another, and kill himself at his high school in the state of Washington. For the convictions in these cases, each of the four parents mentioned received incarceration sentences of two years or less.

While these cases show a marked awareness of the theory that parents can be criminally liable for their children’s actions, especially pertaining to gun crimes, none of the cases held the parent criminally liable for actually causing injury or death to the victims, as Jennifer and James Crumbley were. Jennifer and James were charged with and found guilty of four counts of manslaughter, where causing death must be substantiated by evidence at trial. Thus, the Crumbley case represents a striking leap in the legal theory of holding parents criminally responsible for intentional acts committed by their children that result in injury or death.

Implications on Future Criminal Cases

With considerable certainty, the Crumbley verdicts will not open the floodgates to a new avenue for criminal prosecution of parents in the United States whose children commit school shootings and other acts of violence. According to Peter Langman, Ph.D., renowned expert on the psychology of school shooters, most parents of prior school shooters were less aware of their children exhibiting risk factors of future violence. Because they were less aware of the red flags, the parents were more likely to experience denial or fear of overreaction, which leads to nonreporting of risk factors. Court records and police reports from these cases confirm Dr. Langman’s findings regarding parents’ lack of awareness. For example, in a recent documentary, American Tragedy (2019), about the mass shooting at Columbine High School, Dr. Langman discusses a conversation about awareness that he had with the mother of one of the shooters, Dylan Klebold. Dr. Langman revealed that people who knew Dylan called him the “least violent person” and the “sweetest guy,” who had friends, exhibited prosocial behaviors, and was smart and kind, though warning signs did exist. Dr. Langman refers to this as “the enigma,” which makes it very difficult for parents to understand the significance of these warning signs and attempt to intervene. In trying to explain this enigma to Dylan’s mother, Dr. Langman stated that “the Dylan who committed the shooting was not the same Dylan she knew and raised,” for in the months leading up to the attack, Dylan wrote in his journal that he had the worst existence ever; that he was experiencing suffering, anguish, isolation, conspiracies, and paranoia; and that death would be freeing. His homicidal rage and vitriol for others were depicted in what are known as “The Basement Tapes,” video recordings made by Dylan and co-shooter Eric Harris. Dylan hid these feelings well from his family, and his journal and the videotapes were only discovered after the pair killed 13 people and injured many more during the shooting at Columbine. Klebold and Harris killed themselves in the school as the massacre concluded.

Jennifer and James Crumbley’s level of awareness of Ethan’s risk factors was significantly higher in comparison to prior cases. While Ethan Crumbley directly asked for help and expressed his symptoms of mental illness to his parents, most other teenaged school shooters did not make unequivocal pleas for help and, in fact, denied to others that they needed help. Other parents were not privy to overt threats to harm classmates made by their adolescent children, as Jennifer and James were on the morning that Ethan committed the attack. While the risk factors of depression, suicidal ideation, and overt threats existed in school shooting cases, parents were significantly less aware of them and thus could not have neglected them as was the case with the Crumbley parents. For parents to willfully neglect or consciously disregard behavior, they must be aware it exists. Adolescence is a time long considered to be the norm for children to restrict their parents’ active involvement in their lives and awareness of their activities, resulting in parents being less cognizant of their children’s thoughts and behaviors. Thus, because Jennifer and James Crumbley were so privy to the risk factors of violence exhibited by Ethan, they had the opportunity to consciously disregard and neglect them, ultimately resulting in the deaths of Ethan’s classmates. Furthermore, other parents of school shooters were not asked by school administrators to remove their children due to dangerous behavior on the mornings of previous attacks, as the Crumbleys were, which they rejected by leaving Ethan in the school. Jennifer and James Crumbley were aware of Ethan’s journal, whereas in other cases of shootings, the existence of video recordings and journals kept by the shooters were only discovered after their attacks. Finally, Jennifer and James Crumbley purchased the handgun used in the shooting as a gift for Ethan when he was just 15 years old, a parental behavior that simply does not exist in evidence of other school shooters’ families. In several cases, firearms were purchased by parents and kept in the family home, but not directly gifted to children exhibiting mental health symptoms. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), easy access to weapons, especially firearms, is the most escalating factor of an impending school shooting.

A reasonable standard of parental care would contradict most behaviors that Jennifer and James exercised in their care of Ethan. Simple acts of allowing Ethan to see a mental health professional, inquiring about his journal, removing him from the school when requested, locking the gun into a gun safe, or not purchasing the gun for him at all would contribute to providing reasonable care of a child. Parenting teenagers is complicated and by no means simple. However, the intervening actions that Jennifer and James could have done in this case are straightforward and reasonable. That reasonable care could have averted the shooting, prevented the deaths of four teenage students, or barred a prosecution of these parents that is based on grossly negligent conduct.

As there were multiple contributing instances of Jennifer’s and James’ actions and omissions in this case, understanding exactly what conduct will meet the standard of negligence needed to prove the specific elements of causing death in future cases may remain blurry. Evidence of the Crumbleys’ most significant actions and omissions leading up to the attack was presented to the jury, and it may remain unclear precisely which behaviors were most persuasive for them to return a guilty verdict. Most likely the jury viewed the behaviors in their accumulated totality, but it would be impossible to predict whether the verdict would remain the same if one or some behaviors did not occur. There is no bright-line test for recklessness or negligence. In the area of recklessness and negligence, case law precedent determines whether future cases will likely result in successful prosecution. However, there was no direct precedent for this case. Consequently, Michigan’s successful prosecution of Jennifer and James Crumbley may now become the precedent.

Since a comparison of similar cases has revealed that most parents were not nearly as aware of their children’s risk factors as the Crumbleys, this newfound theory of criminal responsibility of parents will probably remain rare, but it is now possible. At the very least, the verdicts against Jennifer and James Crumbley will serve as a stark warning—a warning to parents that they must exercise reasonable care of their children and for their children’s needs, and an unambiguous warning to provide safe storage of guns. They cannot disregard risk factors of significant mental health symptoms, suicidal ideation, or homicidal ideation, for it can result in horrific crimes, especially when the child has easy access to a firearm. Should this level of reckless disregard of adolescent behavior exist in future cases, the convictions of Jennifer and James Crumbley shall serve as the warning that parents can and will be held criminally liable for their children’s crimes.

Conclusion

The historic and unprecedented guilty verdicts against Jennifer and James Crumbley hold them both criminally liable for causing the deaths of four students whom their son murdered during a planned school shooting at an American high school. These convictions will always mark the first time that parents were found guilty of homicide statutes for a mass murder committed by their teenaged child. This extraordinary case allowed prosecutors to test a theory of liability like the concept known as respondeat superior, the civil law principle that requires a master to answer for a servant in certain circumstances. A more current example would be where an employer is found civilly liable for an employee’s tortious actions. Here, in Michigan v. Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents are now answering for their child’s crimes. Though Jennifer and James Crumbley are each responsible for being a contributing factor to the deaths, their son did in fact commit the homicidal act for which they now answer.

In the overwhelming history of school shootings, parents were largely unaware of the status of their children’s mental states leading up to the killings, though hindsight improves the general understanding that the risks were present. It has always been difficult for parents to differentiate between teenage angst, depression, and depression with suicidal and/or homicidal ideation. However, once an act of significant violence took place, the symptoms viewed in retrospect became clearer to them. The Crumbley case is highly distinguishable from those cases because Jennifer and James were explicitly aware of their son’s mentally distressing symptoms before the shooting and, significantly, they purchased a gun for him while he was experiencing those symptoms. This largely resulted in their convictions, which have now expanded the legal theory of parental liability. When parents become aware of their children’s mental health symptoms or risk factors of dangerousness, they should provide a standard of reasonable care, which must differentiate greatly from the egregious negligence displayed by Jennifer and James Crumbley.