And the Universe makes some sense today.
The egregious facts of this case demanded a criminal case be filed against the parents. Given those facts, I don’t think this is a case of hard facts make bad law. Contrary to the bleating of Detroit-area commenters to articles in The Detroit News, I don’t believe this is a “slippery slope,” because it will be hard if not impossible to apply to a wider range of less extreme cases. I have an idea: Lock up your fucking guns for real.
It is galling to watch blowhard attorneys who are full of shit. These parents–both of them–would have been far-better served with public defenders. The jury is to be commended for their service in this horrible trial.
A few more observations. People have commented on Prosecutor McDonald second-chairing the trial. Of course she second-chaired. For my tax dollars (and I am not a resident of Oakland County), I want a prosecutor who can try a case. When a big case goes before a state supreme court, of course a state AG may make the actual argument on appeal instead of the trial attorneys. Does it mean s/he is eyeing a seat on the high court or some higher office? Maybe. But maybe it means s/he is doing their job.
Can you imagine Brooks Patterson, Richard Thompson or Jessica Cooper representing the county in a case like this? Me neither. I don’t know about David Gorcyca, but I do know he was the big boss when underlings in that office were busy conducting wrongful prosecutions that have since been reversed.
And as for the position that anything a prosecutor, AG or governor does is “just political”–those positions are political and they are politicians. They make decisions that impact their electability. Some, like Patterson, Thompson and Cooper, are not only less than qualified, they make dirty decisions.
And for you oldsters like me, when your boy Patterson was prosecuting attorney he started an exploratory committee so he could seek higher office. Any higher office would do–attorney general, governor, senator–whatever–anything up the food chain would work. Nobody seemed to have a problem with his open-ended desire for self-promotion and power. He had to settle for a lifetime county executive slot and thank god no one outside of Oakland County fell for his brand of stank.
Yesterday there was an interesting article in the Washington Post about the Jennifer Crumbley trial. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02/05/jennifer-crumbley-trial/ . If you have a subscription, read the comments and compare them to the comments posted in articles about this case in The Detroit News. Make all the arguments you want about WAPO being left of center (the Media Bias chart has it “middle/skews left,” https://cms9files.revize.com/goshencountysd/GCSDLib/HSchools/Media-Bias-Chart-7.0_January-2021-Licensed-Copy-kqpxtc.pdf), commenters from the Detroit area skew hateful/misogynistic/racist. The Detroit Free Press no longer allows comments to their articles and the News should do the same.
Kudos to the jury for following the court’s instructions and seeing through the defense attorney’s shit storm (and no, it was not a strategy–nice try). I commend McDonald’s office for bringing this case on behalf of the four murder victims who were at Oxford High School, where they should have been safe.