Hear Me Out: Punishing A Shooter’s Parents Misses The Point

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Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 May 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out: prosecuting parents. Ethan Crumbley’s parents didn’t pull the trigger that killed 4 students in 2021 — but they’ve been sentenced to prison time for it all the same. School shootings are devastatingly common in this country, but punishing the parents of the killer is a new tactic of handling the aftermath. Even if you think the Crumbleys were bad parents, though, the questions should be posed: why are we punishing them under the law? And is this the best way to address, or even prevent, mass tragedies? Professor, writer, and legal contributor for ABC News Kim Wehle joins us to urge for a look at the bigger picture. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie. Want more Hear Me Out? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/hearmeoutplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. For the first time, the parents of a school
0:07.0	shooter are facing manslaughter charges for the actions of their son.
0:11.1	James and Jennifer Crumbly are facing a decade maybe more in
0:14.7	prison, but they did not pull the trigger that killed four students in 2021,
0:19.6	their son now a legal adult did.
0:23.0	At the core here is a question about how and whether we can prevent mass shootings by
0:28.2	enforcing legal consequences for perpetrators.
0:31.5	Are we addressing violence by punishing anyone and everyone
0:34.5	whose actions might have led to a tragic end or are we missing the bigger picture?
0:40.3	Everyone has so much energy around the crumbly's and I'm very sympathetic to that, but focusing
0:45.8	on the parents right now, that's what we have.
0:48.9	That's terrible.
0:50.0	That's not how policy should work and this is a nightmare.
0:53.2	Kim Whaley, a professor and legal analyst, joins us in just a moment.
0:59.5	Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. Late last month, Ethan Crumbly turned 18. If his name sounds familiar, it's because when he was 15 years old he brought a gun to school in Oakland,
1:14.6	County, Michigan and opened fire. Four people were killed, seven injured.
1:19.2	There have been nearly 85 school shootings since the year 2000 in the US but there's a
1:24.3	unique twist to Crumbly's case. Ethan's parents, James and Jennifer Crumbly, have
1:30.0	also been found criminally liable for the shooting.
1:33.2	They've been sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison
1:36.1	for involuntary manslaughter.
1:38.0	They are, of course, intending to appeal.
	...

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