Michigan prosecutors want life without parole for teen school shooter Ethan Crumbley
Prosecutors will seek a life sentence without parole for the Michigan teenager who fatally shot four classmates and injured seven more people in a bloody massacre at his school last year.
Ethan Crumbley, now 16, pleaded guilty Oct. 24 to terrorism and multiple murder charges in connection with the Nov. 30, 2021, slaughter at Oxford High School.
First-degree murder convictions in Michigan usually come with mandatory life without parole sentences. But Crumbley is entitled to a hearing becauase the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory life without parole for juveniles is unconstitutional.
“A sentence of imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole is appropriate in this case,” Oakland County assistant prosecutor Marc Keast wrote Monday in court documents.
Crumbley was not offered a plea deal, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The hearing has not yet been scheduled. When it does take place, Crumbley’s fate will be determined by Judge Kwame Rowe. If Crumbley receives the minimum sentence, he will be eligible for parole in 25 years.
Defense attorney Paulette Michel Loftin said the hearing “will give the court, as well as the public, a good inside look into the difficult home life of Mr. Crumbley and what challenges he was facing.”
Crumbley was 15 years old when he killed Tate Myre, 16, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Hana St. Juliana, 14, and Justin Shilling, 17, in the halls of Oxford High, about 35 miles north of Detroit.
The teenager chronicled his declining mental health in a notebook.
“I will cause the biggest school shooting in Michigan’s history,” he wrote. “I have fully mentally lost it.”
A teacher spotted Crumbley’s disturbing journal on the day of the shooting, and he was called into an administrative office for a meeting with his parents. However, James and Jennifer Crumbley refused to take Ethan out of school. Hours later, he pulled the gun they bought him out of his backpack and opened fire.
Ethan Crumbley’s parents are each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. They have pleaded not guilty.
With News Wire Services
