Father's plea deal in parade-shooting case is not a 'beacon' for anything

A central legal question in the Highland Park parade shooting case remains unanswered

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Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.

Crimo and punishment

Seems fair, I guess.

Robert Crimo Jr. was terribly, recklessly irresponsible in late 2019 when he signed false affidavits that helped his troubled minor son buy firearms, one of which police say he used to kill 7 people and wound another 48 at the 2022 Highland Park July 4 parade.

He offered a surprise guilty plea Monday just as he was set to go to trial on felony reckless conduct charges and will serve an expected 30 days in jail* beginning a week from Wednesday. The plea deal he struck with prosecutors also calls for him to perform 100 hours of community service and serve two years on probation. He reportedly faced up to three years in prison if convicted, which I suspect he would have been given the totally justifiable rage in Lake County at the apparent, alleged consequences of his appalling parenting.

Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said the guilty plea will serve as a “beacon” for prosecutors across the country to hold parents accountable for the actions of their children. … “We’ve laid down a marker to other prosecutors, to other police in this country, to other parents, that they must be held accountable,” said Rinehart. (Sun-Times)

Yes and no. This is an unusual case in that the son was an adult — nearly 22 — when the fatal shooting occurred. And, as I noted in “Are the sins of the father really a crime?” the son no longer needed any adult to help him apply for a firearm owner’s identification card. The father’s legal responsibility ought to have expired on the son’s 21st birthday. For if not then, when?

His attorney, George Gomez, addressed reporters after the hearing, saying his client accepted a plea deal because prosecutors were pitting members of the family against one another.

Gomez said Crimo Jr. felt it was in the best interest of his family and the Highland Park community not to publicly relive the tragedies of the Fourth of July shooting in a trial.

“The last thing Mr. Crimo wants is the Highland Park community to relive these tragic events and make a public spectacle,” the attorney said.

As the trial date approached, Gomez said it appeared the state’s strategy required pitting the Crimo family against one another, especially given the father would be prosecuted before the son, disclosing key evidence to the public and jeopardizing his son’s right to a fair trial.

“As a father, Mr. Crimo wanted to ensure that his son received a fair trial,” Gomez said. (Tribune)

With all due respect to the legal presumption of innocence, that’s nonsense. The father’s trial wasn’t going to strengthen or distort any of the massive amount of evidence against the son, and if the father had concerns about the Highland Park community he would not have helped his plainly unbalanced son buy guns nearly four years ago. And he certainly would have pleaded guilty months ago to spare the community all the inevitable stories in the media about the motions and hearings related to his upcoming trial.

The father probably saved himself a lot of money in legal fees, since my guess is he would have been convicted and then would have gone through an expensive appeals process that, even if he won that appeal — which I also predicted — would have amounted to more agita and expense than a couple of months in the county cooler.

Crimo Jr.’s plea deal may or may not provide a small measure of closure to the families and friends of the parade-shooting victims and to the wider community. I certainly hope so. He admitted the obvious — that he screwed up terribly.

But it feels to me like a settlement, not a “beacon” for anything. His compromise with prosecutors doesn’t answer the question of what parents’ legal responsibility is for the horrific acts of their adult children.

*This sentence has been corrected from the original posting to reflect the amount of time Crimo is likely to serve behind bars.

Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses

Steve S. — A bumper sticker I see quite often here in northwest Montana reads, “Trump 2024: Fuck Your Feelings.” I even see young men who appear to be vets wearing T-shirts with the slogan. This makes me wonder, if the person is a vet and he claims to suffer from PTSD, am I allowed to say "Fuck Your Feelings?”

Zorn — You might get a punch in the nose so I wouldn’t advise it. I agree in general that people are too sensitive to minor slights and criticism and differences of opinion these days, but I disagree that this sensitivity is unique to the political left. There are no snowflakes like conservative snowflakes who can’t face ugly truths in American history, who vibrate with indignation over jokes about their religion, who collapse into a puddle at the idea that transgenderism is real, who run and hide over invented fears of COVID vaccines and whose politics appears animated by fear.

Tami S. — I listened to this most recent episode of “The Mincing Rascals” and was frustrated during the conversation regarding public school funding and vouchers. The Chicago Public Schools switched to a student-based funding format for the 2013-14 school year.

Under this format, schools are mostly funded with a dollar amount per student. This has an enormous negative impact on under-enrolled schools, which tend to be those in poorer neighborhoods. Panelist Austin Berg’s comment that Invest In Kids scholarships that assist students in transferring to private schools will improve student-to-teacher ratio is misguided at best. Students transferring out will actually limit the resources given to the public school because funding will be incrementally curtailed. The underserved will be further underserved.

Zorn — The argument nevertheless seems to be that somehow, through the magic of competition, public schools will improve when we spend tax money on private schools. Public school teachers will simply try harder so they can retain students. Or something. Chalkbeat updated its look at the research on subsidizing private school tuitions earlier this year in “Do school vouchers ‘work’? As the debate heats up, here’s what research really says.”

There is a large body of evidence suggesting that public schools get slightly better in response to competition from school vouchers, at least as measured by test scores.

This has been seen in studies of Florida, Louisiana, Milwaukee, Ohio, San Antonio, and even Canada. As one research overview put it, “Evidence on both small-scale and large-scale programs suggests that competition induced by vouchers leads public schools to improve.”

The impact is usually small and may vary depending on the program. 

Jim Q. — Regarding “How does it feel? Excruciating!” featuring a clip from an awful Broadway musical, I never got Bob Dylan. I don't know how so many can kneel at the Dylan altar. His voice is terrible. I never liked any of his songs. It's a mystery to me.

Joanie W. — Dylan had a good singing voice and was an accomplished musician, as he displayed in his album Nashville Skyline. See:

I think when he sang his earlier stuff (and some of his later stuff), he wanted to make his voice grate. I think he wanted his voice to stick out over the music so that the anger and frustration in his protest songs would jump out at the listener and connect with the listener’s inner feelings. And it was very successful obviously with a lot of people. And his lyrics were essentially musical poetry, for which he received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2016.

Zorn — It’s difficult to dispute matters of taste. I like Bob Dylan’s voice but I really didn’t like the affectations I hear in his Nashville Skyline-era recordings. He’s a terrific poet and I call your attention to my 1997 column “Nobel for Dylan? Don’t think twice, it’s all right,” which preceded him winning the Nobel by 19 years.

For multi-faceted talent with language and sustained international impact, few if any living writers are Dylan's equal. Never mind the melodies. Forget the mournful, ragged voice. Disregard the sideshow excursions into various religious traditions and the turbulent personal life. Just read the words. … There may be writers who conjure the ache of lost love with more precision, who use metaphor more skillfully to express political outrage, who tell allegorical tales with more interesting imagery, who are better at expressing joy and who exhibit more insight about regret. But no one does it all better than Bob Dylan.

Rick W. — There’s a value to the clock changes that has nothing to do with when the sun comes up. It’s a twice-yearly reminder that time of day is a human construct, not the law down from the mountain. This becomes particularly clear when you cross paths with a clock that doesn’t change automatically or that you forgot to fix (in our case usually the clock in the old car and the one in the rarely used guest bathroom). That moment of disorientation that comes with finding the unadjusted clock reminds us that time is arbitrary, an illusion, I think Ford Prefect said.

Zorn — The time change has become progressively less onerous as more and more clocks and watches self adjust. I don’t love it. I’m already keenly aware of time, which feels more like a precious commodity to me than an illusion. All of our times are short at the longest, as the saying goes. That’s as cold a reality as there is.

I find that I like the extra hour of sleep when we fall back and the suddenly longer afternoon when we spring forwards, and I know that a nation that can’t bear to part with the penny coin is way too hidebound ever to change, so I relax into the minor inconvenience.

David L. — You were disparaging and dismissive at my comment last week when I suggested that Biden's open Southern border could result in sleeper cells of terrorists awaiting orders to commit murder and mayhem in our country. However, in the past week:

1. The Intelligence Division of the Department of Border Security and Customs issued an internal advisory that Islamic jihad, Hezbollah and Hamas could be trying to cross our border.

2. The Director of the FBI warned that Islamic jihad, Hezbollah and Hamas could be planning attacks in the US..

3. Secretary Myorkas, in testimony to a congressional committee the other day said the Department of Homeland Security estimates 600,000 people came across our Southern border without detection just this year!

Are you still pooh-poohing my expressed concern about possible terror sleeper cells already in our country after all these concerns stated by high-ranking people and agencies in our government? Remember, not too many people were likely concerned about terrorist sleeper cells in our country before 9/11, and these are much more volatile times.

Zorn — I don’t doubt that there are people in this country illegally who are intending to commit acts of terror, though it’s pretty striking how little foreign terrorism there has been on our shores in the last 22 years. I do, however, doubt that members of would-be terrorist sleeper cells are resorting to trying to blend in with migrants at the southern border in order to slip into the United States.

Joan P. —You asked why in the world anyone would donate to candidates who have suspended their campaigns, and the answer may be to help potentially capable legislators clear the decks after contending in the wrong contest in hopes that they'll be encouraged to try again in a contest where they can prevail.

Zorn — That seems like a real bank shot to me. Why not simply donate to viable campaigns?

Ya gotta see these tweets!

Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:

In case you were wondering, “Dew Dogs Are Real And They're Spectacularly Horrifying.”

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There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!

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