OXFORD, Mich. – A legal expert shared his concerns about what the guilty verdict in the Jennifer Crumbley trial could mean for parents in the future.
On Tuesday afternoon, 12 jurors reached a verdict in Crumbley’s trial after listening to seven days of testimony. The mother of the Oxford High School shooter was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter -- one for each of the students her son killed on Nov. 30, 2021.
Local 4′s Christy McDonald spoke with Jeffrey Swartz, a former criminal defense attorney, prosecutor, and county court judge, on Tuesday afternoon about the trial. Swartz is a current Cooley law school professor.
Here’s what he said about how this case could set precedent, and what it might mean for parents in the future:
“There are some lawyers who are saying this isn’t going to be that bad a precedent because Michigan has passed a statute which deals with guns and securing guns,” Swartz said. “The problem is that if they go under the second theory that is there was an easy fix and she was grossly negligent for not doing that easy fix, the question now comes in as to, can you limit that verdict and the precedent it may set -- if it fact the conviction is affirmed -- to only guns?
“I don’t think it can be done that way. My personal opinion is that (in this scenario), now parents are going to have to worry about everything in their home that could be used as a weapon that they’re going to have to keep away from their kids even into when they become teenagers.
“For example, if you’ve got a kid who plays baseball and you’ve got baseball bats in your garage, and he gets into an argument with somebody, gets mad and comes home and gets a baseball bat and beats some other kid’s head in, the question is, ‘Should you have secured those baseball bats? Should you have secured your kitchen knives? Should you have secured your landscaping shears?’ All of these can be weapons. How far are we going to go? And there seems to be no end to the examples that I could give you.
“I’m concerned about the precedent it’s setting that will spread and become far broader than it is now. Other states could take this as persuasive precedent to do the same thing in their states.”
NOTE: This statement was made about an hour before before the guilty verdict was announced.
