Reason.com raised an interesting dilemma when it comes to the prosecution of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley’s mother and father. The State convicted Ethan Crumbley as an adult, even though he was 15 at the time of the shooting. Yet they just convicted his mother for not protecting her “child”
Reason summed it up like this:
One of the more contorted parts of this outcome, however, has more to do with how the state approached Ethan, who was prosecuted as an adult and who thus received the maximum sentence Michigan allows: life in prison without the possibility of parole. “There is a logical contradiction in the state declaring Ethan Crumbley an adult—with full responsibility for his crime—while prosecuting his parents for gross negligence in child care,” writes Megan K. Stack in an essay for The New York Times. “Ethan Crumbley was a child, or he wasn’t. He was responsible for his actions, or his parents were. Can the state argue both positions at once? Prosecutors insist they can.”

We break it down.