What’s next? Because they didn’t lock up the Hostess Ding Dongs, are parents going to be held criminally liable for their child’s obesity — his diabetes, high blood pressure, and fatty liver disease?
On Sept. 4, 14-year-old Colt Gray allegedly used a semiautomatic rifle to kill two students, two teachers, and wound nine others at his Georgia high school.
Using the recent Michigan prosecution as a template, in which teen shooter Ethan Crumbley’s parents were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for supposedly ignoring their son’s mental instability and failing to secure a handgun at home, Georgia authorities have charged Colt Gray’s father with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment. These charges add up to a possible 180 years in prison.
Doesn’t a charge of second-degree murder require the perpetrator to be the one actively participating in the crime? In this Georgia case, the father neither instructed his son to carry out these shootings nor pulled the trigger himself. So, by what artful calculus are prosecutors arriving at this indictment?
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Is our justice system dispassionately rooted in the principle of personal accountability? Or, blinded by retributive passions, is it simply a thinly disguised mechanism of mob vengeance?
In other words, does it merely seek someone — anyone — to blame and punish as harshly as possible?
In February 2024, Michigan jurors knew what was expected of them, and the Crumbleys were wrongly convicted. Colt Gray’s father will assuredly be a victim of this same travesty of justice.
Scott R. Hammond
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