One Hour and Forty-Seven Minutes

Deliberations began at 9:00 a.m.

The verdict came back at 10:47 a.m.

One hour and forty-seven minutes. That's what a Georgia jury decided 29 felony counts were worth. That's what they gave to the question of whether a father should be held criminally responsible for his son's school shooting. That's how long they spent on a case that will fundamentally reshape the relationship between parents and children across this entire country.

Twenty-nine counts. Do the math. That's less than four minutes per count. Less than four minutes to weigh each individual charge, consider the evidence, apply the legal standard, and reach a unanimous conclusion. Some of those counts carry sentences of ten to thirty years. Some of them carry the weight of a child's life. And this jury processed them faster than most people process a lunch order.

I want to be very clear about something. This is not about whether Colin Gray is guilty or innocent. The jury has spoken, and the legal system has produced its result. What I am saying is that the process failed. Not the verdict. The process.

The Crumbley Standard

Jennifer Crumbley's jury in Michigan deliberated for 11 hours over two days. Eleven hours. For four counts of involuntary manslaughter. They asked questions. They re-read jury instructions. They wrestled with the legal standard. They took it seriously.

James Crumbley's jury also took its time. Also asked questions. Also worked through the evidence methodically.

The Crumbley cases were historic. First time parents had ever been charged in connection with their child's school shooting. The juries understood the gravity. They deliberated like people who knew the world was watching and that what they decided would echo through courtrooms for decades.

Georgia's jury had an even heavier burden. Colin Gray faced 29 counts, not four. He faced second-degree murder charges, not just involuntary manslaughter. The charges were more severe. The legal theories were more complex. The precedent being set was even more consequential. And this jury spent less time deliberating all 29 counts than the Crumbley jury spent on a single afternoon session.

How?

What Happened in That Courtroom

Look, I've been covering this trial from Day 1. I watched the prosecution call witness after witness. Students who were shot. Teachers who watched their colleagues die. Medical professionals. Law enforcement. Days of devastating, gut-wrenching testimony about what happened inside Apalachee High School on September 4, 2024.

Here's what I also watched. I watched a defense that barely showed up.

The cross-examinations were timid. The challenges were minimal. When the prosecution loaded the courtroom with victim after victim, witness after witness telling the jury about the horror of that day, the defense let most of it land without a fight. Colin Gray was the only defense witness. One witness. Against the prosecution's parade of dozens.

Was that strategic restraint or was that a team that got outworked?

Because here's the thing about victim impact testimony. It's powerful. It's supposed to be. These are real people who suffered real harm, and their stories deserve to be heard. But in a trial about what the father knew and did before the shooting, the sheer volume of testimony about what happened after the shooting created something dangerous. It created an emotional wave so overwhelming that the actual legal question got lost in it.

The question was never whether the shooting was horrific. Everyone in that courtroom already knew that. The question was whether Colin Gray consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk. Whether he knew his son would harm someone and did nothing. Whether the state proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, on each of 29 separate counts, that this father's conduct met the legal standard for criminal liability.

One hour and forty-seven minutes says that question never got the deliberation it deserved.

Georgia Has a Problem

This is the same state where Edrick Faust was just convicted on all counts in the Tara Baker cold case murder. A case where the defense attorney was held in contempt, fined a thousand dollars, and where serious questions about the fairness of the proceedings were raised throughout the trial. Faust's family walked out of that courtroom saying justice was not served.

I'm not comparing the facts of these cases. They're completely different crimes. What I am pointing to is a pattern. Georgia juries delivering sweeping guilty verdicts at speed, in cases carrying enormous consequences, in courtrooms where the defense faced an uphill battle from the start.

When a jury convicts on every single count in under two hours, it raises a question that nobody in the system wants to hear. Did they deliberate, or did they decide before they sat down?

The Victim Impact Problem

The prosecution spent days putting survivors on the stand. Students who were shot. Students who watched their friends bleed. Teachers who barricaded doors. Parents who got the worst phone calls of their lives. Medical professionals who treated the wounded.

Every single one of those people deserved to tell their story. I am not questioning that for a second.

But this trial was not about whether the shooting happened. This trial was about what Colin Gray knew and did before September 4, 2024. The legal question was about his conduct, his knowledge, his decisions. And the prosecution front-loaded the trial with so much emotional testimony about the aftermath that by the time the jury sat down to deliberate, the pain of what happened may have eclipsed the analysis of whether the state actually proved its case on each individual charge.

That's not justice. That's strategy. And it worked.

My father, Steven M. Askin, spent his entire career fighting against exactly this. The system leveraging emotion to bypass the burden of proof. Making the jury so angry, so heartbroken, so desperate for someone to pay, that they stop asking whether the state actually proved its case. Dad went to prison for protecting attorney-client privilege. He was convicted for teaching people their rights from a coffee shop. He knew what it looked like when the system decided the outcome before the process played out.

One hour and forty-seven minutes looks a lot like that.

What This Means for Every Parent in America

Forget the Crumbley precedent for a moment. The Crumbleys were convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Serious, but limited. The legal community could absorb it because the standard was relatively contained: parents who buy a gun, ignore explicit warning signs, and refuse to take their child home from school on the day of the shooting.

Colin Gray was convicted of second-degree murder.

Murder. For what his son did.

Not for pulling a trigger. Not for planning an attack. Not for walking into that school. For, according to the state, allowing his child access to a weapon after receiving warnings. The legal theory is that his negligence during the commission of cruelty to children constituted second-degree murder.

Think about what that means going forward. If a parent misses warning signs about their child's mental health. If a child posts something online that the parent doesn't see. If a teenager hides violent ideation the way teenagers hide everything from their parents. If a gun exists in the home.

Under this precedent, a prosecutor somewhere can look at the aftermath and work backward to the parent. And a jury can convict in under two hours.

This isn't hypothetical. This is now the law in Georgia. And other prosecutors in other states are watching. The Crumbley case opened the door. Colin Gray's conviction kicked it off the hinges.

Parents with children who are struggling, who are acting out, who are showing signs of mental health issues, now face a new calculus. It's no longer just about getting their kid help. It's about whether their response to their child's struggles will be deemed criminally sufficient after the fact, judged in hindsight by a jury that already knows the worst possible outcome happened.

That's a terrifying standard. And it was established in one hour and forty-seven minutes.

We're Not Done Talking About This

We're still on Day 4 of our podcast coverage of this trial. There is so much more testimony to break down, so many more moments to analyze, so many more questions to raise about how this prosecution was built and how this defense responded. That content is coming over the next couple of weeks.

But today, on the day the verdict dropped, I need to say this plainly.

Something that changes the fundamental legal relationship between parents and children in America deserved more than 107 minutes of deliberation. A case built over 10 days of testimony, involving 29 separate felony charges, each carrying years or decades of prison time, deserved jurors who asked questions, who debated, who wrestled with the standard, who took at least one full day to work through the evidence.

The Crumbley juries gave that case the respect it demanded. This Georgia jury did not.

Was Colin Gray a good father? The evidence suggests he failed his son in significant ways. Did the prosecution present compelling evidence of negligence? In many areas, yes. Could a thoughtful, deliberative jury have reached the same verdict after careful consideration? Absolutely.

But we'll never know if that's what happened here. Because they didn't take the time.

One hour and forty-seven minutes. For 29 counts. For a man's life. For a precedent that will follow every parent in this country.

That's not deliberation. That's a rubber stamp.

WATCH THE VERDICT Historic Verdict Delivered in Colin Gray School Shooting Trial