Month: April 2024

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a 160-year-old law is still enforceable, making abortion a felony. The 4-2 court ruling upholds the 1864 law still on the books in the state, in a decision that effectively bans abortion. The Arizona Supreme Court’s new decision effectively undoes a lower court’s ruling that stated that a more recent 15-week ban from March 2022 superseded the 1864 law. The Arizona Supreme Court said it would put its decision on hold for 14 days, saying it would send the case back to a lower court so that court could consider “additional constitutional challenges” that haven’t yet been cleared up.

The 1864 law in Arizona – which was codified in 1901, and again in 1913 — includes an exception to save the woman’s life, but makes abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one. Per NBC News, this Civil War-era law, which was enacted a half-century before Arizona gained statehood, was never repealed and an appellate court ruled last year that it could remain on the books as long as it was “harmonized” with a 2022 law, leading to substantial confusion in Arizona regarding exactly when during a pregnancy abortion was outlawed.

President Joe Biden blasted the ruling in a statement from the White House: “Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest.” Biden called the ban “cruel” and “a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” while promising to “continue to fight to protect reproductive rights.”

Editorial credit: AdamBagindo / Shutterstock.com

Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley, each will spend the next 10-15 years in prison in Tuesday’s first-of-its-kind penalty. Per NPR, both parents were found guilty in separate trials on four counts of involuntary manslaughter; each of those charges carried a maximum penalty of 15 years, and the sentences are to be served concurrently.

James Crumbley, 47, and wife Jennifer, 46, are the nation’s first parents to be convicted and sentenced on charges arising from a shooting carried out by their child. They will each receive credit for 858 days already served. They each received the maximum sentences sought by prosecutors after they were found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials in February and March for the killing of Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17, in the school shooting carried out by their son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time the shooting happened on Nov. 30, 2021.

Ethan Crumbley used a semi-automatic pistol to open fire on his classmates in 2022; Ethan, now 17, pleaded guilty as an adult to the four murders, terrorism and related charges in the 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit, and was sentenced in December to life in prison without parole. Jennifer and James Crumbley had bought the firearm for him for target shooting.

As Judge Cheryl Matthews handed down the ruling in Pontiac, Mich., she noted to the courtroom the warning signs about Ethan Crumbley, adding that “parents are not expected to be psychic …But these convictions are not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could’ve halted an oncoming runaway train .. Opportunity knocked over and over again and was ignored. No one answered.”

Editorial credit: Stock Studio 4477 / Shutterstock.com