George Brauchler
Shortly after the Michigan parents of a juvenile school shooter were sentenced to prison last month for their roles in the arming of their son and his subsequent murder of four sudents and shooting of seven others, Gazette Executive Editor Vince Bzdek explored whether parents should be criminally responsible for their kid’s criminal conduct — especially mass shootings.
The prosecution in Michigan is factually unique and unlikely to be replicable in Colorado absent our legislature’s change to our laws — and that is what is coming for us. Next session. Be aware.
To be clear: The Crumbley parents engaged in inexplicable behavior and unjustifiable lapses in judgment. I believe they would have been prosecuted here, but it would have been more complicated. The Crumbley parents were more easily prosecuted under Michigan laws we do not have here — yet. Colorado does not have an Involuntary Manslaughter charge, like Michigan’s, that contains provisions specific to firearms, the failure to perform a legal duty and “gross negligence.”
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Colorado’s homicide statutes decrease in severity from first- to second-degree murder to manslaughter to criminally negligent homicide. Our manslaughter charge is based on recklessness, which is similar — but not an exact match — for Michigan’s “gross negligence.”
The significant difference between our laws lies in Michigan’s ability to prosecute someone for failure to perform a legal duty. Michigan allows prosecution of a person who “willfully neglected or refused to perform (a legal) duty and (his / her) failure to perform it was grossly negligent to human life.” That fits the Crumbleys. As the elected district attorney told the jury during trial, the parents were “not on trial for what (their) son did,” but “for what (they) did and for what (they) didn’t do.”
This is the change we should expect next year’s legislature to enact, because it simultaneously attacks two things the progressives in power dislike: guns and parents.
Gov. Jared Polis and Democrats in the legislature have continued a relentless march toward making gun ownership by the law-abiding either completely illegal, or so risky many will choose not to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. At the same time, they have done nothing to discourage or punish criminals with guns.
The legislature made it a crime for law-abiding Coloradans not to lock up their firearms in their houses and cars. Yet, this year’s Democrats refused to increase the penalties for criminals who break into cars to steal those same guns. Lawful gun owners who have never misused their firearms are on the verge of having to carry attorney-enriching liability insurance for exercising their Second Amendment rights, while those who have committed felonies — including drug dealing and car theft — can now possess guns under Colorado law (thank you, Attorney General Phil Weiser). Local governments are entrusted to whittle away gun rights by limiting what firearms can be possessed, but they cannot be trusted to decide who and under what conditions a concealed-carry permit is to be issued.
While extremists like Hamas-celebrant Tim Hernandez and Israel-hating Elisabeth Epps work to pass laws blaming and punishing everyone except the evil-doer who pulled the trigger killing someone, Coloradans should know legal theories predicated on parental failure to intervene to prevent “gun violence” would have been irrelevant in every mass shooting case I have handled.
Columbine: The parents immediately lawyered up and provided no statement to law enforcement. The weapons obtained by the evil killers were obtained either illegally (the TEC DC-9), and the wrongdoers went to prison, or legally (the long rifles), by the girlfriend of one of the murderers. Nobody knew what they intended to do. One shooter hid the homemade pipe bombs, magazines, web gear and rifle in his locked bedroom. An appropriately nosey parent would have discovered it — my mom (an appropriately nosey mom) would have discovered it.
Aurora Theater: Everything was purchased legally, including the four firearms, thousands of rounds of ammo, body armor, the building blocks for the apartment bombs and the “road stars” for puncturing police tires as the killer envisioned them chasing him. He spread the purchases around using different methods of payment to avoid detection.
Arapahoe High School: the 18-year-old killer murdered innocent Clair Davis with a legally purchased shotgun.
Mountain Vista High School: Two 16-year-old girls planned a Columbine-style mass shooting that was averted by a nosey parent and DCSO text-a-tip. The would-be killers made efforts to obtain a handgun illegally, but had thus far failed.
STEM School: the 16- and 18-year-old murderers of hero Kendrick Castillo five years ago broke into a parent’s safe with an axe and crowbar to steal four weapons and ammunition.
The issue of parental responsibility for the conduct of children is real and parents like the Crumbleys are rightly held accountable under the law. However, the current discussions and inevitable exploration by our liberal lawmakers of ways to make it easier to criminally prosecute and incarcerate parents is a double-edged sword. It takes little imagination to envision a prosecutor using such a law to target parents of gang members (or is it “gang-involved individuals”?) or bullies or recalcitrant youth or even juveniles who have previously offended.
The Crumbleys are an outlier best addressed under our current laws. But take heed, Colorado parents and gun-owners — unless November’s elections change things under the Gold Dome — expect the legislature to make it easier to prosecute you for the misdeeds of your kids, especially if they involve the use of a firearm.
George Brauchler is the former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District and is a candidate for district attorney in the newly created 23rd Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter(X): @GeorgeBrauchler.