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during second hour drew pictures of a bullet, a gun resembling the SIG Sauer, a person bleeding
from bullet holes, and wrote “Blood everywhere,” “The thoughts won’t stop Help me,” “My life
is useless,” and “The world is dead.” Defendants were also presented with the significant
modifications EC made to that worksheet, where he clearly intended to portray a different, happier
message about the school and himself.
Despite their knowledge of all of these circumstances, when given the option to help EC
and take him out of school, defendants did nothing. They did not, contrary to the recommendations
of Hopkins, take EC home and get him immediate medical help. Nor, when they decided to leave
him at school, did they tell school officials about EC’s history of mental health issues nor explain
to them that EC had access to a gun similar to the one he drew on the math worksheet. Defendants
neither asked EC if he had the gun with him nor did they look in his backpack. And, when they
left the school, defendants did not go home and ensure EC had not taken the gun.
Given all those facts, it was not an abuse of discretion to conclude that there was probable
cause to believe that a juror could conclude that a reasonably foreseeable outcome of defendants’
alleged gross negligence was EC committing a shooting that day. One of the few reasonably
foreseeable outcomes of failing to secure the firearm that was gifted to EC was that it would be
accessible to EC and that, in his mentally deteriorated condition, he might use it in unlawful ways.
In light of those foreseeable events, when presented with what he had just drawn, written, and
viewed that morning, a reasonable juror could conclude that it was foreseeable that EC possessed
his recently gifted gun and intended to use it that day. As a result, a reasonable juror could
conclude that EC’s intervening acts were not a superseding cause of the murders.
In fact, given the uniqueness of the connection between EC and defendants, we question
whether EC’s acts are properly considered as intervening causes capable of superseding
defendants’ criminal responsibility. Indeed, in most cases involving a question of superseding
cause, the third party or victim’s act has no relation to the defendants. For example, in an early
decision from the Supreme Court, People v Rockwell, 39 Mich 503 (1878), the defendant was
convicted of manslaughter when he punched the decedent, who fell to the ground. After he fell, a
horse either jumped on or kicked the decedent, killing him. During a second trial, the jury queried
whether the defendant could be guilty if he knocked the decedent down, but the horse killed him.
Rockwell, 39 Mich at 504. The trial court instructed that he could, and the jury convicted. The
Supreme Court reversed, holding that there was no connection between the defendant and the horse
such that it was foreseeable that the death would occur:
It is impossible to maintain such a charge without making every one liable not only
for natural and probable consequences, but for all possible consequences and
circumstances which immediately follow a wrongful act. There was no necessary
connection between the act of respondent and the conduct of the horse, which he
cannot be said from the record to have been responsible for. [Id. (emphasis
added).]
So too in more recent proximate-cause cases. In Schaeffer, the alleged intervening cause
was an allegedly negligently designed highway off-ramp, Schaeffer, 473 Mich at 443-444, while
in the companion case, People v Large, the alleged intervening cause was the victim riding a bike
in front of the defendant’s car. Id., at 445. The purported intervening cause in Feezel was the
victim’s level of intoxication. Feezel, 486 Mich at 191. In each of these decisions, there was no