PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR JUVENILE CRIMES

Society has long debated the appropriateness of holding parents accountable for the crimes committed by their children. Moral and ethical culpability has usually been considered separate from legal guilt, for many reasons. But in this age of easy access to firearms, and with the tragedy of gun violence ever-present, prosecutors have looked beyond traditional precedents in order to stem the tide of mass shootings in this country. So it was that Michigan jurors, after 11 hours of deliberations, found Jennifer Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday for the gun rampage committed by her teenage son, who carried out the state’s deadliest school shooting more than two years ago.

The trial against Crumbley, 45, was notable: It was the first time a parent in the U.S. was held criminally responsible for a child's school shooting. Ethan Crumbley, Jennifer’s son, was 15 when he killed four students and injured several others at Oxford High School. He was sentenced in December to life in prison without parole.

Instead of charges related to the ownership and storage of the firearm—a more traditional route to holding parents of juveniles guilty of firearm offenses accountable—prosecutors in Michigan sought accountability for the actual crime. In the last few months, parents whose children carried out gun violence in other states have pleaded guilty to charges of reckless conduct or neglect, part of a push by some prosecutors to hold parents accountable when they are suspected of enabling deadly violence by their children. But in the Michigan case, the parents (Mr. Crumbley’s trial is set for next month) were charged with involuntary manslaughter due to the egregious facts in the case, namely that the parents were aware of their child’s disturbing thoughts, but they nonetheless bought him a pistol, took him to a firing range, and gave him access to the firearm at home. Prosecutors maintained that “Ms. Crumbley was guilty of “failing to exercise ordinary care when the smallest tragically simple thing could have prevented” a disaster.

Michigan’s safe storage law goes into effect February 13, 2024. The new secure storage law, Public Act 17 of 2023, requires individuals to keep unattended weapons unloaded and locked with a locking device or stored in a locked box or container if it is reasonably known that a minor is likely to be present on the premises. If an individual fails to store a firearm as required and a minor obtains the firearm and any of the following occur, they are guilty of a crime under Public Act 16 of 2023, as follows…if the minor discharges the firearm and inflicts death on themselves or another individual: a felony punishable by imprisonment for up to 15 years or a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

Although the Crumbley verdict involved specific facts that spoke to the mother’s extreme neglect regarding her son’s mental health, the precedent the decision sets could have a huge effect on future cases. Defendants might plead guilty so as not to risk a similar verdict, leaving parents open to sentences of multiple years in prison.  

TRUMP v. ANDERSON and the SUPREME COURT

On Dec. 19, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on appeal that former President Donald Trump is disqualified from being President under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Maine's top election official - Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows - then ruled on 28 December that Mr Trump could not run for president in the state, also citing the 14th Amendment. Both states barred Trump from appearing on their primary ballot. Soon afterwards, the Colorado Republican Party and Donald Trump himself appealed the state's decision, and oral arguments on the case were heard before SCOTUS on February 8, 2024.  

Jonathan Mitchell, Trump’s counsel, argued that Section 3 is not self-executing, but instead requires federal legislation from Congress before it can be enforced—a view Mitchell tied to Justice Salmon Chase’s 1869 circuit court decision in the matter of Griffin’s Case, though he conceded it was not binding precedent. While Congress had enacted such legislation in 1870, it has since been rescinded, leaving Section 3 otherwise unenforceable without congressional action. Secondarily, Mitchell also argued that Section 3 itself only addresses the eligibility to hold office, not run for it, and that Colorado could thus not use it to disqualify Trump from the ballot because, among other reasons, Congress could choose to rescind Trump’s ineligibility (or, in the words of Section 3, “remove the disability”) prior to his assuming office. 

Jason Murray, counsel for Colorado voters, argued that Section 3 deliberately used broad language to keep insurrectionists out of much of government, including the presidency, without requiring specific enforcement legislation. And by enforcing this disqualification and removing Trump from the ballot, the state of Colorado was simply exercising its constitutional prerogative not to waste its electoral votes on a candidate unable to hold office, just as states have done with other constitutional disqualifications in the past. 

Shannon Stevenson, Solicitor General for the state of Colorado argued next. She used her opening remarks to underscore Colorado’s position that it has the constitutional authority to choose to keep disqualified candidates off its ballots, including those disqualified under Section 3 who might later have their disability removed by Congress, and that the process Colorado used to do so in this case was well established and consistent with the Due Process Clause.

Chief Justice John Roberts voiced several key concerns. Roberts took a step further back to consider structural constitutional issues—and the, in his view, potentially harmful implications of siding with Colorado. Roberts noted that the fundamental purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to restrict state power and expand federal power. Would it not turn the amendment on its head, he posited, for the amendment to enable a state to remove a candidate from the federal election?  Roberts also predicted that, if the Court were to affirm, certain states would begin disqualifying Democratic candidates, too, and “[I]t'll come down to just a handful of states that are going to decide the presidential election.” Roberts thought the breadth of the term “insurrection” made such a scenario likely, and he appeared not to relish the prospect of the Supreme Court having to officiate these disputes. 

Justice Samuel Alito appeared similarly concerned—perhaps more than any other justice—with what he views as the dangerous consequences that could flow from allowing Colorado to bar Trump from the state’s ballot. Two possibilities in particular seemed to irk him: first, that Colorado’s actions may effectively settle the case for the whole country; and second, that different states, relying on different judicial procedures and standards, could alternately generate a precarious lack of uniformity across the country. On Griffin’s Case, Justice Alito appeared unconvinced by Murray’s argument that the reason there have been so few Section 3 disqualifications is that there have been no events like the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Alito noted that there were no impeachments of presidents from Andrew Johnson’s to Bill Clinton’s, but that there have been three since then. 

Justice Sotomayor appeared the most sympathetic to the Colorado voters’ arguments—and perhaps the only justice with any sympathy for them. She appeared skeptical of Mitchell’s interpretation of the non-self-executing nature of Section 3. Justice Sotomayor questioned the validity of Griffin’s Case as a precedent for the Supreme Court; she noted the history of states disqualifying individuals from state elections; and she labeled as a “gerrymandered” argument Mitchell’s suggestion that the president is not an officer of the United States. With respect to Griffin’s Case, Justice Sotomayor noted that in addition to it not being a decision of the Court, Justice Chase reversed his view on the matter a few years later in the Davis case, where he “assumed that Jefferson Davis would be ineligible to hold any office, particularly the presidency.” 

THE QUESTION OF PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY

In another legal challenge involving the former President, a federal appeals panel ruled on February 6, 2024, that Donald Trump can face trial on charges that he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election, sharply rejecting the former president’s claims that he is immune from prosecution. The panel of three judges, two of whom were appointed by President Joe Biden, also questioned whether they had jurisdiction to consider the appeal at this point in the case, raising the prospect that Trump’s appeal could be dispensed with on more procedural grounds. 

During lengthy arguments, the judges repeatedly pressed Trump’s lawyer to defend claims that Trump was shielded from criminal charges for acts that he says fell within his official duties as president. That argument was rejected last month by the lower-court judge overseeing the case against Trump, and the appeals judges suggested through their questions that they, too, were dubious that the Founding Fathers envisioned absolute immunity for presidents after they leave office.

The Supreme Court said last month it will not immediately take up a plea by special counsel Jack Smith to rule on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions to overturn the 2020 election results. Special Counsel Jack Smith, in urging SCOTUS to take up the immunity issue, stated: “This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” prosecutors wrote.