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Michigan school shooter, Ethan Crumbley, for certain, gets the crumbs from his crummy parents who supposedly will not foot the bill for his legal counsel. As a result, the school shooter will get a court-appointed lawyer while his mom and dad hire a whole legal team.
Who is on the team of the Crumbley’s counsel? None other than Shannon Smith, who represented disgraced USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Nassar was an Osteopath, who worked with young female gymnasts and who, according to this, performed osteopathic manipulation, in which a doctor uses his or her hands to move a patient’s muscles and joints with techniques that include stretching, gentle pressure and resistance. Defense attorney Shannon Smith believed that Nassar was “never inappropriate to them”. Oh, really, Ms. Smith?
We will not go into the graphic details of what Dr. Nasser did. Nor how he got caught with at least 37,000 videos and images of child pornography. But, I feel safe to say, Shannon Smith is a true scumbag lawyer. Did I mention Smith also represented Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, a Detroit doctor who performed female genital mutilations (FGM) on young Indian-Muslim women. Smith’s defense? “It was not FGM, it was ‘benign scraping'”.
While Shannon Smith prepares a whopper of a defense for his parents, Ethan Crumbley is being represented by a court-appointed lawyer by the name of Paulette Michel Loftin, a little-known defense attorney from the Detroit suburb of Rochester.
I bet when the Crumbleys boiled hot dogs for dinner, the Parents ate the actually hot dogs, and Ethan got to drink the water they boiled them in!
— Gregg Burke (@GreggBurke4444) December 8, 2021
Sad, but true.
I can see Jennifer and James Crumbley now. “Yeah, son, we know we bought you the Sig Sauer. We know we told you not to get caught while you were searching up good places to buy ammo. We know we kept the thing unlocked. We know we left town without you but we were ‘planning to come back for the arraignment’ (COUGH). But, son, YOU shot those kids and now YOU must pay the consequences, which is why we have the high-profile legal counsel and you get the court-appointed attorney.
No offense to the abilities of Ethan Crumbley’s court-appointed legal counsel but this move is yet another glaring example of the stellar parenting of James and Jennifer Crumbley in action. Ethan Crumbley, along with many high-school-age students, do not have a prayer.
Ethan has been charged as an adult with one count of terrorism, four counts of first-degree murder, seven counts of assault with intent to murder, and 12 counts of possession of a firearm.”-The Daily Beast
While Jennifer and James Crumbley sit and concoct a doozy of a defense with attorney, Shannon Smith. I mean, Jennifer Crumbley told Ethan not to do it. James Crumbley went looking for the gun that was never locked up. And both parents refused to take Ethan Crumbley home after he drew alarming images of a handgun, bullets and blood. These rocket scientists don’t pick up the clue phone that much, do they?
Remember, no matter how badly you think you did as a parent, at least you're not a Crumbley. pic.twitter.com/17EIfHmFJS
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) December 4, 2021
For once, the school was attempting to alert the parents of their child’s behavior. These warning signs should not have been ignored. But we can’t say the actions of Ethan Crumbley’s parents and their lawyering-up antics come as a shock to us. But The New York Post ventures to say that while the Crumbleys may have good reason to hire pricey lawyers and the move may seem a cold-hearted because it leaves their son fending for himself, one prominent lawyer said they may have a reason.
In some ways, the parents have got a harder case than the kid. They’re adults, and he’s a child, and the father bought the gun.”-veteran defense lawyer Bill Swor
Oh, do they really now? Let’s see how hard it is for Shannon Smith to get two negligent parents off. She didn’t succeed for the abuser/pedophile. She did for the doctor who “scraped” young women’s genitals. Not calling Ethan Crumbley a saint but there’s a special place in hell for his parents, that’s for damn sure.
Photo Credit: Ken/FlickR/CC BY 2.0/Cropped
GWB says: Michigan school shooter, [name redacted]
Let’s do the right thing and excise his full name from any posts, please. Let’s not help him achieve billions of hits on Google for his despicable act.
Shannon Smith is a true scumbag lawyer
Now, I am among the first to disparage lawyers in general. But a couple of infamous cases does not a scumbag make. Sorry, but it’s their job to defend those people. And if they didn’t provide a robust defense of those people, how long do you think any of them would provide a vigorous defense of you, when you’re charged some day?
and 12 counts of possession of a firearm
And that is bullcarp. He didn’t possess 12 different weapons or possess it 12 different times. He had one weapon which he fired in one incident. Funny how all these criminals get light sentences on one charge of illegal firearm possession but a big make-your-name-in-the-papers case he gets a count of possession for each and every crime. (Yes, I know it’s how the law is written; it’s stupid and tyrannical.)
But, Lisa, overall it’s an overly emotional post with few facts and a lot of innuendo.
Lisa Carr says: It is overly emotional, I get it. Parents are ultimately responsible here for this tragic event. I don’t care if they bought their kid a Sig. I don’t care if parents build rifles with their kids and go shooting. But have enough sense to realize a 15 year-old’s frontal lobe is not fully developed and lock it up. My 15 year-old son has both shot and cleaned our handguns. He is a normal, well-adjusted kid-not bullied, good grades, sound emotionally, but we still lock things up. The thing that gets me here is that they had every inkling that something wasn’t quite right and did nothing about this. And now, they hire the big guns (no pun intended) and leave their child with his own defense. The left will use this to paint other parents who do not support this current administration, who own guns, into this picture. They have already started this crap. So, yeah. I’m a little emotional.
John C. says: I have no problems with the parents having the best legal representation they can get. If I were hauled into court on a capital charge, even if totally innocent, I would want the lawyer that everyone hates but who has a track record of being able to get a client off, even if said client had been standing over the judge’s own mother’s body with a smoking pistol in one hand and a bloody knife in the other. In a challenge where your life is at stake, find the best champion you can.
That said, they are scum to not afford their own child the same legal representation. As a parent, I find this incomprehensible.
GWB says: They may be looking at the fact that, no matter how good their son’s representation is, he’s going to prison. There’s absolutely no way to prevent it.
I’m not sure I could go that way, but it makes sense.
John C. says: That does make sense, of a sort, but I would still fight harder for my child than I would for myself. Otherwise, I could not consider myself a parent.
cheeflo says: I have no sympathy for the Crumbleys but I have no idea what life in their household is like, so I can’t really comment on the family dynamics. Seems that the court of public opinion has already convicted them, but legally, they may have only committed a couple of gun misdemeanors, if that. The way their conduct is portrayed frames it as though they are criminals on the lam, when that is far from clear. I’m not going to call for their heads.
For example, the media characterized their car as abandoned and that they were found hiding in a building. In fact, the car was just parked outside a building in an area that has numerous commercial/industrial buildings converted to living and studio space. They probably got out of town and went to stay with a friend to get away from their neighbors, not from the cops. Their proximity to the Canadian border is incidental … everything in downtown Detroit is within a short distance of the tunnel and the bridge. If they wanted to flee to Canada, they would have been further ahead to go via Port Huron, only slightly further from Oxford and in the opposite direction from Detroit. It’s not all that easy anymore to enter Canada.
The Oakland County sheriff said that in his 21 years in law enforcement, he’s never seen charges announced publicly before law enforcement was notified and could issue/serve a warrant. Their attorney disputes the narrative put forth by an ambitious prosecutor and says their attempts to contact the DA for information went unanswered.
I find the Crumbleys to be thoroughly loathsome, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So far, the media and the Oakland County DA haven’t been entirely reliable, and since this incident checks all the boxes of an activist cause, it remains to be seen just what the facts are.
Aaron "Worthing" Walker says: Lisa
The evidence that these parents are responsible for their child’s behavior is threadbare at best.
I wrote down a lot of my thoughts, here: https://twitter.com/AaronWorthing/status/1466898533630582787?s=20 I twice said “end” in that thread and then continue with an addendum, so be aware of that. The second addendum actually provides some of the most interesting evidence.
But here are some highlights.
First, under Michigan law, it isn’t even illegal for a minor to possess a gun, unless it is 1) in public and 2) not under the supervision of an adult. That means that in private, he is allowed legally to carry the gun around the house. So saying they have a duty to lock up the gun is contrary to that state’s law.
And if he can possess the gun, he can certainly search for ammo. Sheesh.
And frankly, I can bury you in links to stories about children as young as 12 not only safely handling a gun but using guns to defend their homes from people who would do them and their family harm. Some links are in the thread I linked to.
The best evidence that the parents should have realized their son was dangerous was a note that, in 20-20 hindsight suggests he was potentially violent. Oh, except the school says that he explained it away by claiming that he was working on a video game and they believed him. The literally let him go back to normal class, the very day of the massacre, and the prosecutor has not charged the school with any crime.
As for the mother texting him and saying “don’t do it,” that would be after the shooting started. So that suggests she was trying to tell him not to do something in response to the shooting. So rather than suggesting that she was telling him not to do a massacre, it was probably something more like she thought someone else was doing the massacre, and was worried he might try to stop it.
We should be extremely hesitant in blaming third parties for the acts of others. They are not charged with aiding and abetting, or conspiracy. They are being charged with failing to realize they had raised a monster. Are you so certain you would see the signs ahead of time?
> The thing that gets me here is that they had every inkling that something wasn’t quite right and did nothing about this.
Based on what? I have heard of one solid sign that this kid was going bad. That’s it.
> For once, the school was attempting to alert the parents of their child’s behavior. These warning signs should not have been ignored.
The school actually didn’t believe he was a danger to anyone else in the school, which is why they sent him back to class, and not home. In a letter home to parents they said they observed him for around an hour and he seemed perfectly calm and rational.
Finally, I think it also makes perfect logical sense for the parents to hire a lawyer and not to bother with one for their son. To be blunt, they might have almost no doubt as to his guilt, and while he is constitutionally entitled to a defense and even a free lawyer, they might reasonably believe that there isn’t much a lawyer can do for their son, but a good lawyer might save them. Looking at it from afar, that seems like a prudent use of (likely) limited money.
Let me end on a philosophical note. There’s an odd phrase in the constitution, in the treason clause. It says “no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood.” You see, it used to be that if you committed treason, that they would apply a doctrine called the corruption of the blood where your whole family would be considered equally guilty—unless each of them actively denounced you. And here in the constitution it says that we won’t do that, even for the worst crime in their mind: treason.
So we should be extremely hesitant to blame other people for what someone—even family—does. This is why I only care about the Hunter Biden story to the extent that it exposes the possibility of corruption for his father, to name but one example. And the truth is many kids turn out radically different from their parents. Ronald Reagan comes to mind. Good parent still sometimes have bad kids. Yes, a good parent can make a lot of difference, but bad kids are not necessarily the product of bad parents. You just can’t make that assumption.
Aaron "Worthing" Walker says: Weird, my comment had separate paragraphs, but for some reason the system jumped it all together, which is annoying. oh well.
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