After previously linking to reports about the trial of Jennifer Crumbley in Michigan, I thought it would be worth a somewhat closer look.
Jury deliberations got underway Monday in the manslaughter trial.
Crumbley's son Ethan was 15 when he opened fire at Oxford High School in Michigan, killing four fellow classmates.
Now 17, he was sentenced last year to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to murder and terrorism charges. He is the first minor to get such a sentence since a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling that such sentences are excessive for minors and should be reserved for only the most egregious cases.
The trial of his mother hinges on whether she is criminally liable for manslaughter for, along with her husband, buying her son a gun four days before the shooting. She didn't mention the purchase to school officials at a meeting about her son's behavior the morning of the shooting.
Here's a key passage from CNN's report by Eric Levenson and Lauren del Valle that gets at the arguments from both sides:
Broadly, the prosecution's case relies on an unusual and novel legal strategy and represents an attempt to expand the scope of blame in mass shootings. And in its specifics, the trial has provided an intimate view of the collapse of one American family in a tangle of sex, violence and mental illness.
Evidence included video of the parents learning of their son's actions and then interacting with him, and testimony included details of Jennifer Crumbley's extramarital affair, which prosecutors said distracted her from her son.
More from Levenson and del Valle:
"It's a rare case that takes some really egregious facts," Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in closing arguments Friday. "It takes the unthinkable, and she has done the unthinkable, and because of that, four kids have died."
However, the defense has argued the blame lay elsewhere: on her husband for improperly securing the firearm; on the school for failing to notify her about her son's behavioral issues; and on Ethan himself, who planned and carried out the attack on his own. Defense attorney Shannon Smith said the case was "dangerous" for parents everywhere.
"Can every parent really be responsible for everything their children do, especially when it's not foreseeable?" Smith said in closing arguments.
Jennifer Crumbley took the stand in her own defense and, in a remarkable moment, expressed no regret for her actions.
"I've asked myself if I would have done anything differently, and I wouldn't have," she testified.
James Crumbley, Ethan's father and Jennifer Crumbley's husband, is scheduled to go on trial in March.
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