All right. Andy McCarthy joining us now,
former assistant US attorney and a Fox News contributor fresh
off that judge is sentencing.
Heartbreaking. Listening to some of the parents in that courtroom
this morning.
Andy, just how unprecedented is this to hold parents
of their child accountable for his crimes.
Yeah. I. It's completely unprecedented,
Sandra. And it's it's actually,
you know, your heart breaks for the parents of the
the children who were killed here.
But you have to remember that the person who actually
did the shooting
got treated as an adult and was sentenced to life
in prison.
So it's not like the system didn't,
you know, carry out law enforcement against the person who
actually did this.
It's unprecedented to hold the parents accountable to something that
they obviously didn't
you know plan agreed to participate in.
I I frankly just don't think that this is what
the criminal justice system is for.
I think the criminal justice system mainly is
should be reserved for intentional wrongs.
And I think it's more troubling here because Michigan actually
attempted to or propose passing
child access prevention laws which would prevent,
which would make it a crime for parents to negligently
allow their children
to have access to firearms and the legislature wouldn't pass
that.
So what happened here is the prosecutor made-up a crime
on the fly that the legislature had not opted to
pass
Eddie for our viewers to sort of take them back
to some of the highlights of this trial,
what led up to this day and this moment,
this was some of the evidence that was presented along
the way in the courtroom.
Listen, this is the receipt from the gun store in
Oxford for the six hour SP 2020 two
9mm pistol that was sold to James Crumbly.
This is a picture of the
defendant's son holding the six hour
SP2022. I noticed that he had had some some type
of firearm training.
This is about Jennifer Crumbly's actions.
This is about what she knew and what she didn't
say.
James Crumbly did not know what his son was going
to do.
I mean, that is some of what we heard.
And now there's this question of precedent.
There are some who see this and say,
well, what does this mean is that are we entering
a new world where it goes beyond the person who
commits the crime
and more people can be punished?
I mean, doesn't this open the door to a lot
of possibilities in the courtroom here on out?
Yeah, it's a, it's a Pandora's box.
You're extending the criminal law
to people who didn't actually
commit the crimes. There's hostility,
obviously, because there's a firearm involved,
but no one is alleging that the firearm purchase was
illegal.
There are things that a legislature could have done here
to to criminalize aspects of this.
They opted not to do that.
So if you're going to have a system where
you no longer have to be actually a participant intentionally
in a wrong for the criminal law to apply to
you,
and the prosecutor gets to make up the law
as the prosecutor goes along without the legislature actually prescribing
the laws,
then you know, all bets are off.
And this time it was a gun.
Maybe next time it's the parent who buys his kid
a car,
you know, or some other thing that's legal but can
be dangerous if used irresponsibly.
So who knows where this goes.
But so you look some at some of those emails,
those red flags. I mean,
that should have tipped off these parents that he was
about to carry out this heinous
crime. This was Paul Morrow earlier.
He has sort of a a contradicting look at this
where he says,
no, actually this isn't so unprecedented and makes this analogy
listen.
This case has facts that are particularly egregious for the
two convicted parents,
let's say a bartender who is over serving
a customer who then goes out and drives.
That's a sort of a form of vicarious liability.
And so it's the kind of thing that we've seen
before.
It's not unprecedented. Is that a fair comparison?
Well, I you look, I think Paul's a very smart
guy,
and when I part company with him,
I usually retrace my steps to see where I got
it wrong.
But in my view, having been a prosecutor for a
long time,
this is what you have a civil justice system for.
I mean, these parents ought to be,
you know, sued civilly. And
it's the reason that you get the kind of judgments
that you sometimes see in these tragic cases.
But law, but the criminal justice system is not intended
to deal with tragedy.
What it's intended to deal with is intentional wrongs.
And I think if you take the step where you're
now going to extend it beyond intentional wrongs,
then all bets are off and you don't know where
it goes.
Well, they are the first parents convicted of US mass
school shooting.
And the parents of those victims,
man, your heart just breaks for them
with one saying about her daughter to the parents
as we are awaiting the sentencing earlier to the judge
while you were purchasing a gun for your son and
leaving it unlocked,
I was helping her finish her college essays and she
is no longer with us.
Just heart wrenching. Andy, thank you for joining us on
that today.
Thanks, Sandra. All right.