Posted by It is 10:30 AM Wednesday 2/7/24, my deceased father’s birthday. I started the day by downloading several long Jennifer Crumbley videos and playing them in the background. That is usually a prelude to really paying attention. It helps me figure out what I am doing.
Last night I thought long and hard about it. “I wish it didn’t happen” is my seemingly hollow conclusion. Of course I think killing innocent people and students in high school is awful. I wish Jennifer Crumbley had not been convicted of involuntary manslaughter. But what else could they do? You cannot acquit her, the opposite, as that would be saying she is not responsible.
Parents are responsible for their children for a lifetime. They created them and the same would hold true in adopting an infant.
Now Andrew Smith, Ms. Crumbley’s former–that’s what it says–is on the stand. Princeton Management is a property management company in Southfield; they come up on Google as managing apartment complexes. If they were yelling or throwing things I would hear it, but I can tell a lot just by the visuals. Like Jennifer Crumbley herself, he looks average, worried, and trying to do the right thing.
The prosecutors, a whole table of them, are a publicly-funded team on a mission. Shannon Smith, Crumbley’s lawyer, can’t compete.
Probably we don’t need more laws, but this would be a good one: a suspicious parental behavior misdemeanor. Even a felony. The punishment is going to jail until the trial, the same kind of guilty assumption in this one.
This was never finished. It is Michigan law that parents are responsible for their child causing injury to another. Guilty.
The writing was on the wall for the father too.
I’ve been to Pontiac, Michigan. I have skied at Pine Knob. It isn’t utopia and I respect people people especially during Covid raising kid(s) and trying to maintain a home and hold down a job. Guns need to be treated differently and I’m OK with that.