James and Jennifer Crumbley face sentencing in their involuntary manslaughter case. They could face up to 15 years in prison for each of four counts.
Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Oxford High School mass shooter Ethan Crumbley, are set to be sentenced Tuesday after each was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials earlier this year.
The trials were a rare case of parents facing criminal charges, and possible jail time, over their role in a shooting carried out by their child. They could face up to 15 years in prison for each count, but prosecutors are asking for 10 to 15 years total for each parent, according to a sentencing memo filed by prosecutors last week.
„No sentence this Court can administer will fix the damage caused by the Oxford High School shooting on November 30, 2021,“ prosecutors wrote in requesting the sentence for Jennifer Crumbley. „As the jury found, defendant’s gross negligence was a cause of this damage; she knew of the danger to another, it was reasonably foreseeable her son would shoot someone, but she failed to exercise even the smallest measure of ordinary care.“
Michigan’s sentencing guidelines call for a maximum punishment of about seven years in jail, a sentence prosecutors say is not strong enough.
„Considering the guidelines, what those guidelines do and do not account for, and the objectives of sentencing, the severity of the circumstances in this case and defendant’s total lack of remorse warrant a sentence that exceeds the applicable guidelines range,“ prosecutors continued. „A sentence of 10 to 15 years‘ imprisonment is proportionate to these offenses and this offender.
