to think this isn't right? mother convicted if manslaughter

[greenacrylicpaint]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68223118

A jury has found a Michigan mother guilty of involuntary manslaughter for failing to stop her son from carrying out a deadly school shooting.

by all means, she didn't come across as mother of the year, but come on.
what sentence will the father get?
an absent father in a similar case?

oh america

She literally bought a murder weapon + gifted it to her mentally unwell teenager.

she then didn’t keep it in a gun safe or locked away, or keep tabs on it at all.

she refused to engage with the school about her son’s violent drawing.

I am not familiar with the legal precedent in the state that she is in - but this would seem to pretty comprehensively meet the criteria for Gross Negligence Manslaughter in the UK

Seems reasonable to me, given the circumstances. What an appalling parent.

You seem to be missing the point that she gave her mentally unstable 15 year old a gun and then went on to ignore the drawing he did of a school shooting. She clearly knew she was in the wrong by running away too. I think you need to give this one up. The conviction is 100% the right one

Are you even thinking about what you are saying.

The mother was an adult. She didn’t have to buy a gun. It wasn’t an impossible position nor was a perceived social norm a reason to buy a gun. Parents in the US don’t routinely arm children and society at large doesn’t condone it. Laws prohibit it.

And there may be many reasons why she broke the law. But that shouldn’t stop a jury finding that she did break the law. Just like her son broke the law. Questions of diminished responsibility would be explored at trial as a defence. That would not stop other processes taking over to deal with somebody who was dangerous to society.

When people so something wrong which breaks the law, that is a simple factual statement. How responsible they are for their actions is considered firstly as to whether they can stand trial and secondly in how they are sentenced.

Agreed that the court recordings are brutal. Lots of sex-shaming. At times, you'd swear that the State Prosecutor had no awareness of the complexities of modern parenting at all. How feasible is it police teenage access to the internet.

Not a substantial fan of the tactics of the Defence Attorney and I can still say that she was wholeheartedly committed to demonstrating that a conviction would set an impossible standard of foresight and perfection for parents. She was also very good at pointing to the fact that no professionals had raised concerns so it was holding the mother to a different standard to expect her to have anticipated her son's action or fully understood the level of his disturbed thought patterns.

Lots of thoughtful commentary on legal YT that addressed perspectives on buying firearms for young people. As you'd expect, for someone from the UK, it's a very different culture in parts of the US.

There is already some precedence.

Jeffrey Reinking, father of the 19 year old who murdered 4 people in the 'Waffle King' murders in Nashville in 2018 was found guilty of "illegal delivery of a firearm to a person who had been treated for mental illness within the past five years" and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

And Robert Crimo was sentenced for sponsoring his 19 year old son (who he knew had a been mentally ill and threatened to kill) for a gun licence. His son later used the licence to buys guns and killed 7 people at a 4th of July parade in 2022.

So moves are happening to hold people/parents providing guns to mentally unwell people to account. The gun laws in the US are totally bizarre though.

You really seem to be making this some feminist cause and don't see any fault in the mother and are projecting your experiences onto this case.

This case isn't about you, we don't know what the father will get so why don't you lay off that until we know.

You have also mentioned absent fathers, this is nothing to do with that, these parents actually were enabling and arming their child.

As said you have a weird take on this and are projecting so much and making it about you.

Again, @greenacrylicpaint , what grounds do you think the mother has for appeal?

This is a good summary. Like others I was alarmed when I read a headline about this but looking at the facts it seems reasonable.

Whilst I agree with the verdict I think it’s worth mentioning that ‘she told jurors that her husband brought their son to a gun store the day after Thanksgiving to buy him a handgun as a gift.
She said she "didn't feel comfortable" being responsible for securing the gun and left James Crumbley to manage it.
Ethan Crumbley never took the stand, because he was expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refuse to testify.’

So I hope it’s confirmed in the dad’s trial who actually gave him the gun.

Parents bought a 15 old boy a 9mm hand gun. He kept it unlocked in their room.
Manslaughter yes, perhaps in UK it would be 'joint enterprise' as they knew he was searching for ammunition.

I also hope the father is convicted for his part in their son’s awful crimes.

But you seem keen to paint the mother as someone decidedly uncomfortable with the purchase of the gun. Why is that?

@greenacrylicpaint the mother wasn’t in an impossible situation. She ignored her child’s MH problems and she bought him a gun. Why are we so keen to absolve parents of doing a crappy job and making dangerous decisions.
If the parents had been engaging and accessing all support for their son. If they had removed access to dangerous weapons. If they had monitored his internet use whilst he was obviously in such a vulnerable state….THEN I’d have sympathy for them.

Exactly!! @Hereyoume have you even read anything about this case??

@greenacrylicpaint

one is a bit of a whirlwind who I expect to get into some sort of trouble. it's tiring. it saps energy. it costs time all the meetings with school and healthcare. I'm concerned of a conviction like that.

Would you buy the whirlwind a gun or knife then tell them 'LOL' and to hide it better if it was found?

(Even without the exacerbating factor of alone them having heard voices or drawn pictures of shootings.)

If not you don't need to be 'concerned' about this kind of conviction.

I was just quoting the BBC article. I have put the relevant excerpt in quotation marks.

Two threads this morning from people trying to argue that the concept of parental responsibility is misogynistic. I really fear for the future.

Why was it ‘worth mentioning’ though?

She and her husband recklessly and unlawfully gave a firearm to a minor with mental health problems. That person went on to kill other people. In England and Wales that would be deemed unlawful act manslaughter or possibly even joint enterprise murder rather than involuntary manslaughter but its the same thing at the end of the day.

Yes, she deserves the conviction and I imagine her husband will get exactly the same when he goes on trial.

I think it's a great result. Why would anyone have problem with this? You can't in all honesty imagine that you can give your angry child a gun and claim no responsibility when they use it.

@pootlin the excerpt reads as though she was ok with her son being bought the gun but wasn't comfortable being the one who bought it. That, with the messages to her son, to the man she was having an affair with and the drawings point to a woman who knew her son was a risk. That she didn't want to be the person securing the gun when she thought he might "do something dumb" is crazy.

Both parents are jointly responsible for their own failures here imo.

Can you explain why you think the mother has mental health issues?

If you're suggesting her parents should be charged, are you under the impression that as a child she was denied mental health support? Or that they supplied her son with the gun?

Nah fuck these people

So OP, given all of the above, and the fact that she was complicit in illegally equipping her underage son with a gun and ammunition that he used to kill other children with....what do you think should have happened?

You don't think there should be any consequences for her actions - is that what you're suggesting?

She was an accessory to murder - are you saying you don't think she should face any consequences?

People go on about monitoring teenagers with mobile phones. Who monitored this kids use and access to his gun. Obviously it was treated as a shiny new toy, not a serious weapon. . The parents deserve all they get.