Here’s what’s going to happen to School Shooter Ethan Crumbley in Prison

by Chris Dankovich

I may know what Ethan Crumbley’s life in prison is going to look like better than anyone, anywhere.

Almost two decades ago, in very different circumstances, I made the biggest mistake of my life at the same age (15 years old) and in the same county as him. For almost seventeen years, I have lived in the Michigan prison he will eventually come to, in the prison system where he will most likely spend the rest of his life if he is convicted of killing four students in a horrific school-shooting.

I was on the prison yard when I heard the police sirens, and saw the helicopters flying around. I came inside to see the news about the shooting just a handful of miles away, at a high school I attended basketball games at as a kid, in a community where people I care about live and I spent time in growing up. My heart goes out to the victims and all those who were there. This is for those who may wonder, or find peace in knowing, what forms justice will take for the young person who tore that community apart.

FOR NOW, HE IS INCARCERATED IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
Fifteen-year-old Ethan Crumbley is currently being held under isolation in the Oakland County Jail. By state and federal law, while in jail he must be separated from all adults by sight and sound, meaning he will be placed in solitary confinement of one form or another for his entire time in jail. Due to the nature of his crime and statements about self-harm made public, he will be additionally on suicide-watch, placed in either an indestructible nylon-and-velcro suit (in which he was pictured at his arraignment) or a paper-suit for clothing, and will be allowed nothing in his cell but a mattress and bedding to match the suicide-watch clothing. He will have no one to talk to except on an occasional visit from the jail’s psychologist or his lawyer (his parents are being charged with crimes of their own, so no visits from them). He will sit in a cell with a mattress on the floor, day-in and day-out, and be completely alone with nothing to do, with no distractions until his court proceedings are complete… possibly years.
[I lived these very conditions for weeks, not years, as I had been charged as an adult but was not deemed to be a threat to children and was mainly housed in the secure juvenile facility. The utter nothingness for these weeks was something worse than my time in adult prison, and I at least was not under suicide-watch. The room was white, there were no windows, no clock, and the lights never changed. He likely will not know what day it is]

WHAT HIS DEFENSE WILL BE
The public side of everything involving him will be organized through the actions of his lawyer. As a minor being charged as an adult, he will have a court-appointed attorney unless someone else hires him one, or a lawyer (likely seeking publicity) volunteers. Since the facts of this case are not in dispute, there is only one possible defense available to him: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI). If this plea is entered in court on his behalf, an order will be given for him to undergo a psychological evaluation. He will be sent, for an afternoon or a handful of days, to Michigan’s Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ypsilanti, where he will be evaluated by psychological professionals. Should he refuse to speak to them, he will automatically be deemed sane, by law. Should he speak to them, he will be viewed suspiciously, as is everyone who goes there.

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WHY HIS INSANITY DEFENSE WON’T WORK
While Ethan Crumbley is almost certainly mentally ill, he will NOT be found to be insane by the staff-psychologists, and will not be found as such in court. To do so, he would have to be found, under Michigan law, to either have been (1) unable to understand the difference between right and wrong, or (2) unable to conform his actions to this understanding. Previous to the offense, he reportedly made actions and statements that (if validated) demonstrate that he knew that killing people at his school was wrong, and preplanning it shows he could conform his actions. He will be fighting against a skilled prosecutor with a trove of evidence against him. Should he appear in front of a jury, that jury would be pulled from a very conservative base in a county where he is hated and reported on daily. His county has the highest of conviction rates, and regularly issues some of the highest sentences in the nation. He would be an ant, standing against a footstep.

WHAT WILL LIKELY HAPPEN INSTEAD
It will likely never come to that. Should Ethan Crumbley go to trial, he potentially faces years in the hellish form of solitary confinement he is currently in while awaiting court, and he will break. The chances of his only defense available are essentially nonexistent. Whether to free himself from solitary or for other reasons, Crumbley will almost certainly plead guilty to all charges against him… if not immediately, then after six months or a year. At that point, he will receive his sentence. In Michigan, chronological juveniles have available to them a minimum sentence of anywhere between 25 to 40 years in prison for first-degree murder, or a sentence of LIFE without the possibility of parole. In this extreme circumstance, there is almost no judge who would give him anything apart from the life without the possibility of parole sentence… but even if a judge did sympathize with him, he faces multiple charges that carry multiple sentences.

He will spend the rest of his life in prison.

ONCE CONVICTED, HE WILL GO THROUGH THE STATE-PRISON INTAKE
All prisoners from Michigan’s lower-peninsula will go through the Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson, Michigan, the intake-prison known in the system as “Quarantine”. Here the steel-bars clank on the same mechanisms as Alcatraz was built with, in the same setup and style of architecture. The officers are mean. The soul of the place is mean. Men regularly attempt suicide there by jumping off the high tiers. He will be separated from the adults… in a cell that is literally in a cage. After nearly twenty years in prison, I still have nightmares about that place.

UNTIL HE TURNS 18, HE’LL COME TO THUMB CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
If he is sentenced before his 18th birthday, this young man will be then be transferred to the “Youthful Offenders” cellblock at Thumb Correctional Facility in Lapeer, which is walking-distance from the high school where he killed four innocent kids. There, he will have the option of receiving psychological treatment from mental-health professionals used to dealing with specifically underage prisoners. He may be eligible to take GED classes in a prison school, where he will be subject to random searches and patdowns to and from each class (as everyone else is), his peers no longer middle-class rural children but adult-criminal teens who were raised in the toughest parts of Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac. Instead of football players and honor roll students, he will attend class surrounded by Bloods and Crips. This is where I grew up.

ONCE HE TURNS 18, HE WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO A MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON
Ethan Crumbley will likely be transferred on his 18th birthday to a maximum-security prison, as he will then be too old to be “housed” with those under that age [*this rule is temporarily altered while the prison system remains under COVID-19 quarantine]. Prisoners serving long sentences (or LIFE) in Michigan must serve three years before being eligible to be “housed” in a lower, regular security level. In a maximum-security prison, he will be housed with the most hardened gangsters the state has to offer, professional tough guys who use violence as a way of life and who are skilled in it, with or without weapons. Or, if his psychological issues prove serious enough in prison, he will live at Woodland Correctional Facility’s psychological unit, a place where the state’s most psychologically-disturbed prisoners reside.

ETHAN CRUMBLEY’S FUTURE IN ADULT PRISON
The remainder of Ethan Crumbley’s life after he is sentenced will be very, very difficult. Life in prison is hard for anyone, but his time will be harder than almost any other prisoner will face. He likely will be targeted because of his crimes and notoriety. His particular crime will earn him no “tough points” in prison, where a kid who surprised other unarmed children with a gun will be in an environment where the greatest amount of respect is given to those who fearlessly extort, rob, or enforce their will on other grown men.
Apart from his crime, because of the way he looks he will be targeted by gangs, sexual predators, and men looking to extort him. He will have to learn to physically fight without a weapon, or be willing to tell on others in order to be placed in protective custody, to prevent these from happening. Prison is already a lonely place, but there he will live the loneliest kind of life in the lonely environment of prison.

HOW HE WILL SPEND HIS DAYS
If he is able to manage his interactions with other prisoners, the remainder of his days in prison will play out slowly. Depending on which specific prison he finds himself at during his sentence, he will spend most of his time in a cramped cell shared with another man, or be warehoused in an open-air, “pole-barn” cellblock with rows and rows of prison beds in the open (there are over 30 prisons in the Michigan Department of Corrections, each with a slightly different “flavor” of incarceration… though he will be forever ineligible for minimum-security ones). If he makes enough money in a prison job (which averages about the equivalent of $0.20 an hour), he may eventually be able to purchase a small television or radio. He will be able to read books from the prison library, while sitting on a four-inch thick stuffed mattress set on a steel bunk-bed. If he stays out of trouble, a prison yard with a track to walk or jog on, and some weight equipment, will be available to him. On the illicit side, if he meets connected people and hustles in some way, he may occasionally be able to obtain some drugs to momentarily take his mind away from where he is, until he finds himself still in prison, forever. If he works hard, or someone sends him money, he will be able to buy some chips or honey-buns from commissary. Someday, when his parents are released from jail themselves, they may choose to visit him. And these will be the only joys he will ever know again. He will think about what he did every moment of every day, except when he is distracted by prison-politics, grown men attempting to hurt him, occasional snacks of highly-processed foods, or stories of other people’s lives. Coming to prison at fifteen, I know from experience that he will have a harder time speaking, interacting, and communicating with those who come to prison as adults. I was able to find ways to overcome this; he may or may not. Either way, he will have little in common with any grown man, or anybody at all.

THE REST OF HIS LIFE
And his life will live out like this, until he dies. He will never know freedom. He will never know what it’s like to be in love. He will never know what it is like to really live.

What will justice look like for Ethan Crumbley? He will live to know the pain he caused others.

(Dedicated to Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre, Madisyn Baldwin, Justin Shilling, as well as those injured in the recent shooting at Oxford High School)

Chris Dankovich is serving 25–37 years in Michigan for killing his mother when he was 15 years old.

Chris Dankovich #595904

Thumb Corr Facility

3225 John Conley Dr

Lapeer, MI 48446