I have a couple thoughts on this. First, if the adults are guilty and the courts accepted the argument that they neglected to give the child the help he needed, why is the child serving a life sentence? The article makes it sound like he wanted help and knew he needed it.
Also, I thought I read that the parents had not just left the weapon unsecured, but let him use it.
Because only the parents knew the worst parts, they bought him a gun, and then left it accessible.
Days later when called to the school over concern that he was showing signs of committing a mass shooting, the parents downplayed it and said their son should remain in school.
They didn’t mention the gun, or ask the son about it. They didn’t even go home to check.
We have this weird taboo over talking about guns. But when a kid shows these signs “do they have access to guns” should be one of the first questions asked.
I mean, it’s a common question in these scenarios.
Nothing physically compels them to tell the truth, though.
This…
This compels them to tell the truth
Because if they lie, and the worst happens, they go to prison
Also his mother chose to get finger banged by the guy she was cheating with instead of helping her kid using the excuse, “she couldn’t skip work” and then she skipped work.
The kid needed help, and knew he needed help, but he still chose to go through with it instead of turning himself in.
The drawing on the math paper was a cry for help. He could have just as easily turned himself in, he did not.
It also doesn’t help that:
a) Ethan gave his dad the money for the gun, and picked out that specific gun, when he was not old enough to own a gun.
b) Dad made a straw purchase for his son.
c) Mom posted to Instagram calling the gun her sons Christmas present.
I don’t think many kids know about their options though. He basically said “I asked my parents for help and they denied me, so I can’t get help.” To me, that suggests the kid thought he exhausted his options. An uneducated child is a system failure imo, not a child’s criminal act.
I’d also say that most people who are victims of suicide could have turned themselves in. Do we frown on them because they opted for violence?
The criminal justice system doesn’t normally care how awful you are to yourself, its there to try and prevent you being awful to others. I believe you can still be charged with a crime in most of America if you survive a suicide attempt, but it isn’t normally pursued because it doesn’t really accomplish the things the state cares about…just like the state doesn’t typically care about any psychiatric conditions you have unless they make you a danger to others.
I’ve got a few psychiatric conditions myself, and sometimes they contribute to me making bad choices that negatively impact the people I care about, but that doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility I have to own up to my actions and make amends when I fuck up. I can’t imagine anything I’ve dealt with leading me to the conclusion that killing a bunch of children or peers would be acceptable or desirable, but I also have the benefits of being properly medicated and having years of therapy under my belt that had given me a lot of great tools for dealing with my shit…but its still my shit and I’m responsible for it.
And yes, I do tend to frown on suicide. It’s a final solution to a usually temporary problem, hurts EVERYONE who loves you, and it destroys your ability to do anything to make the world better.
Christians do because suicide is a sin
Plus Mom chose to get finger banged by her lover instead of skipping work instead of helping her child during an emotional crisis. Even her boss said it would have been fine…she’s gross.
That guy is a murderer and his father is an accessory to murder. Where’s the doubt?
The child asked for help and was neglected. Had he not committed a crime, wouldn’t we be calling him a victim?
He can still be a victim of bad parenting.
Sure, but then we’re talking about him as a victim still. So why is he spending his entire life in prison? Some are cheering the Gypsy Rose Blanchard release, but saying this kid is a murderer who deserves to live behind bars
Especially since he was 15 at the time of shooting and was literally incapable of getting mental health treatment (if your parents dgaf it’s basically impossible)
Are we actually arguing that he’s not guilty because he was neglected?
I wasn’t trying to say he’s not guilty in my original comment, but rather, if our country as a whole viewed crime and punishment differently, this kind of situation could be avoided altogether. Hypothetical, I know, but conditioning people to help those in need, in turn, reduces the rate at which people treat others poorly. If this kid was treated better in the first place, it could be said he would have never committed this crime, but now he has, and there’s no coming back from that. With his punishment, he will be facing a life of psychological tortue, which won’t make anything better.
In USA, we have a Punitive Justice system, which is about punishing people for things they have or may have done. This has conditioned us to -want- people to be punished for perceived slights. This is opposed to a Rehabilitive Justice system that some European countries have, which is about not just helping the one who commited the crime to be a better person, but conditioning their citizens to not be the type of people that commit said crimes in the first place. That’s all there is to it.
Even if he’d been found not competent to stand trial, he’d still be committed involuntarily. I don’t know if this makes a difference.
That ends once you’re stable though.
Edit: also, I don’t mean the kid should be free, but a life sentence for a neglected child seems unfair. The kid knew he needed help and couldn’t get it. Sounds like a victim too.
The kid killed 4 other kids. At 15 you know that isn’t acceptable even if you need help.
He was sick… he knew he was sick… he asked for help
And it’s very messed up he didn’t get that help. However, he’s still responsible for his actions and needs to be held accountable for them. He knew it was wrong or he wouldn’t have asked for help in the first place. 15 is old enough to understand what it means to kill someone.
If you’re an alcoholic, and you’re trying to get help, but you drive drunk on the way to therapy and kill someone, you’re still responsible.
The sentiment that your mental health crisis somehow absolves you of your actions is dangerous for society. I’m pretty far left politically but I’ve been seeing this more and more from that side of the aisle and it’s concerning. Arguably everyone who kills has something mentally wrong with them!
But the adult is able to get help on their own, the kid can’t.
Going by the education I got from L&O, what happens in one trial doesn’t really affect a separate trial, even for the same crime
Yes, from a strictly legal perspective. But if we take a step back and ask ourselves “who is responsible?” it’s a little different.
Because they don’t know what to do or who to blame.
We live in a time in history (like all times previous and much of the future) where resources are scarce, both natural and otherwise. This falls into the “otherwise” category. Does the boy need help? Yes. He is a human, and so he deserves help like the rest of us. However, the resources diverted to helping him could help many more, instead. Many who have a much higher chance of rehabilitation. Triage isn’t a nice thought, but in the mental health crisis we live in, it’s the only thing we have. We have to help as many as we can, and that means some of the ones that need it the most get left behind. If there were infinite means of rehabilitation and assistance then he would get everything he needs, unfortunately that isn’t the case, and so instead he gets the most we can offer, which is life in prison. There will be other options for help inside, though they are lacking. Perhaps through a societal and political change we can begin to better help him and those like him, but those changes have to happen before any work can be done. Railing against the system won’t do any more good than banging your head against a wall. Right now, helping him isn’t an option, though, if you work hard for it, you can help change that. Talk to your state politicians, send letters, raise awareness among your peers. If the change is important to you, then make it a priority in your life.
The resources argument doesn’t really make sense. Locking someone up for life is more resources than a few years of rehabilitation.
Different kind of resources. We aren’t running out of wardens or jail space (well, yes we are, but no one cares, and they’ll just stack more in anyway…), we don’t have enough mental health professionals.
These have got to be some of the stupidest people alive, holy shit
It’s pretty wild that you can charge someone as an adult and then charge their parents.
I really don’t get the existence of charging someone as an adult regardless though.
You’re charging two adults. The parent is charged with a separate crime. It’s like if you enabled someone to commit a crime. That’s a crime. That’s what’s happening here.
“James Crumbley is not on trial for what his son did,” prosecutor Karen McDonald told the jury. “James Crumbley is on trial for what he did and for what he didn’t do.”
They neglected their son’s mental health problems and left a gun unlocked at home
But age up everyone 20 years in the story so everyone is more obviously an adult in your head. 60-something year old parents neglecting their adult son’s mental health is not their fault anymore. If he’s an adult, it’s his responsibility. Even if the dad bought the son a gun, if the son is an adult, then the son was responsible for locking it up and keeping it safe.
It makes sense to me to charge a parent for getting their kid access to something dangerous and ignoring safety requirements. Like installing a pool without a fence that a kid drowns in, that’s clearly morally the parent’s fault. But the kid has to be a kid. Buying your adult child a pool which they later drown in is not the parent’s fault. Culpability shifts when the child becomes an adult.
The son is 15. That’s still very much the parents responsibility. That’s a child who lives with his parents, who can’t buy his own gun, who doesn’t have the same mental capacity as the 35 year old in your hypothetical.
Great. Don’t charge him as an adult then.
These are two separate cases
I’m saying that the case declaring him an adult was wrong to do so, if the facts of the case show that he was a child whose parents are both liable for his actions.
Sure they are separate cases so the legal system can treat him as an adult and a child at the same time. But that’s bad. The legal system shouldn’t do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_minors
A person can technically be a child, and then found to be responsible enough to be treated as an adult. To use a fictional example, Dougie Howser, MD was a 14 year old licensed to dispense drugs.
Same deal with charging someone as an adult. If a 14 year old plans a crime over months they can’t claim that they acted impulsively or had no idea of what the crime would mean.
I get your argument, but at the end of the day they’re a child. I’d argue you can’t have the mind of an adult until you’re an adult despite how much it seems to emulate as such.
I don’t think there’s a magic moment when a person becomes ‘adult.’ A person of 17 years and 11 months old and another person 18 years and three days old aren’t fundamentally different.
This whole trail as an adult is just to give out harsher penalties. Honestly it should be renamed to something else as to avoid these discussions. Something like dangerous child proceedings or some such with appropriate handling
Here’s a dirty little secret. There are many counties in the US where the Number One employer is the prison system. Those folks have a vested interest in keeping the prisons full.
But there are different places in the legal code to modify punishments against intent, like manslaughter v murder. One would think the idea behind charging someone as a minor is because they are a minor, who by definition has a less developed brain and less worldly experience.
We don’t think they’re developed enough to vote, and we don’t have exceptions to that based on someone thinking really hard about it or really knowing what they’re doing. They’re just minors, they can’t “vote as an adult.” Even emancipation is more about separation from parents, it’s not gaining full rights as an adult.
That’s why it’s done on a case by case basis.
I’ve know 12 year olds who had opened their own bank accounts and could be trusted to care for a baby, and 16 year olds who needed supervision all day.
I’m just pointing out how the laws work, I don’t have a stake in the issue.
I’m not like, blaming you. I’m explaining why it doesn’t make sense to me.
I don’t think it tracks to allow it on a case by case basis. We have one set of punishment for minor offenders and another for adults. It doesn’t make sense to be allowed to arbitrarily decide after the fact to charge someone with the more serious set of punishments.
And all of this ignores the fact that juries disproportionately charge black kids as adults, which proves how arbitrary it is in practice.
That’s why there are jury trials.
There’s a difference between the 16 year old who sees that his neighbor left the keys in her car and impulsively takes a spin, and the 35 year old professional thief who stole three cars that week.
Right, one is under 18 and the other is over 18.
So, someone who is 17 years and 364 days old is a child, and someone who is 18 years and one day old is a mature adult?
Wow they actually did it
Good start. Now go after the gun stores.
