Charles Langston:Her son was a school shooter. She's on trial. Experts say the nation should be watching.

The Charles Langstontestimony of a convicted mass shooter's mother on Thursday is not only essential in her criminal trial, but also for the rest of the nation in a case that raises precedent-setting questions about a parent's responsibility to stop a murderous child.

Jennifer Crumbley, the first parent in America in charged in a mass school shooting, testified Thursday that she was an attentive mom who never saw signs her teen son Ethan would kill four children at his Michigan high school in November 2021.

But prosecutors have argued that the Crumbley parents knew their son was struggling with alarming mental health issues, including on the day of the shooting, but bought him the gun that he used rather than getting him help.

Legal experts say the case could have huge impact on how society views parents’ culpability when their children access guns and go on to cause harm with them. But whether the outcome encourages prosecutors to bring future charges against parents remains to be seen, two law experts told USA TODAY. 

“This could be a groundbreaking case,” Adam Winkler at the UCLA School of Law said. “This is a case that could create real incentives for parents to be much more cautious giving their children access to firearms.”

Ethan Crumbley, 15 at the time of the shooting, was sentenced in December to life without the possibility of parole plus an additional 24 years.

Mom of shooter takes the stand in her own defense

Asked if she felt that she had failed as a parent, as she noted in a message to her ex-lover following the shooting, Jennifer Crumbley said: "I don't feel that I'm a failure as a parent. But at that point in time, I felt I had failed."

Crumbley told jurors that as a parent, she saw her role as being someone who protected her son from harm, not protecting others from him. "That's what blew my mind ... that my child harmed" other people, she said, adding: "I wish he would have killed us instead." 

During her testimony, Crumbley also said she doesn't want to minimize the impact on the "real victims" and their families. But, she said, "We lost a lot."

In an average criminal trial, a defendant would not usually testify, Winkler said: “It’s Criminal Law 101. You do not allow the defendant to take the stand, it doesn’t matter whether they’re innocent or they’re guilty.”

“It’s the last act of a desperate defense,” Winkler said about putting the defendant on the stand.

University of Michigan law professor Frank Vandervort, however, said he wasn’t surprised the defense chose to put Crumbley on the stand, and said it was likely to gain sympathy from the jurors.

“I think the jury almost needs to hear from her,” Vandervort said. “I think the jury is going to want to know, ‘How does she explain these things?’”

Has there ever been a case like this before?

Whether the Crumbley parents are convicted or acquitted, the case could have broad implications because of the unique and extreme factors involved, and the rare legal theory of holding parents accountable for their children’s violent actions. 

Winkler said whether to charge parents and what to charge them with is a very difficult decision for prosecutors to make. Parents of shooters also suffer greatly after these tragedies, he said, and it can be very difficult to prove a direct line between parents’ actions (or lack thereof) and their child’s actions. If parents’ behavior doesn’t seem especially “blameworthy,” it can be especially difficult in more gun-friendly states where children regularly partake in activities like hunting with parents, Winkler said.

Parents have done jail time before when their children have gotten their hands on guns and shot people, but they have usually been for lesser charges. Vandervort noted two other examples: The mother of a 6-year-old who shot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia, last year was sentenced for child neglect and firearms offenses; and the father of the adult gunman in the deadly 2022 Fourth of July parade shooting in Illinois served time for sponsoring a firearm application for his son.

Notably also in Michigan, a man who lived in the same house as a 6-year-old boy who shot and killed classmate Kayla Rolland in 2000 was charged and pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for leaving the gun accessible to the child in a shoebox. Much different circumstances than the Crumbley case, Vandervort said. 

“That we have to go back 20 years to find a similar case exemplifies how really unusual this case is,” Vandervort said.

How does the outcome of this trial impact future cases?

Prosecutors have said the “egregious” aspects of the case include the clear signs the shooter was in mental distress leading up to the shooting and that his parents ignored it. They claimed the shooter should have been taken for immediate treatment the morning of the shooting when his parents were called into school to discuss troubling drawings and statements he had written on a math assignment.

But the parents did not want to. Prosecutors also said the parents bought the murder weapon as a gift for their son days before the shooting instead of getting him treatment. 

Those are all extreme factors, Winkler and Vandervort agreed. The two were split on whether they thought the Crumbley parents’ trials could have future legal implications such as encouraging prosecutors to bring charges against the parents of future mass shooters. 

Winkler thought that was certainly possible, but acknowledged that while there will likely be future school shootings under similar circumstances, the evidence may not be as strong as in the Crumbley case.

“I think this case could be a landmark precedent that encourages more criminal charges against the parents of school shooters,” Winkler said. 

Vandervort thought there would be very few future cases quite like this, and said it’s a very legally difficult case to argue despite the extreme circumstances. But regardless of the verdict, he said the local community would feel a sense of justice after hearing all the facts come out. 

And either way, the fact that two parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter for the four lives their son took with the gun they bought him should send a strong message that parents must be extremely cautious with guns in the home. 

“This could be a turning point, if there’s a conviction, where we see more attention being paid to parents of school shooters, and there may be some good in that,” Winkler said. 

“On the one hand, it’s sad because the parents have suffered a great loss too. On the other hand, we live in a very heavily armed society. We need to do everything we can to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. And that’s going to rely on each and every gun owner to do their part to keep their firearms secure and not provide firearms to people who can’t be trusted.”