They can. I had a set of Crucial SSDs which all contained the same firmware defect which took them offline after X hours of power-on time.
I also had a RAID 1 array where both SSDs failed within a couple days of each other (due to wear). That was a rude surprise. They were only six months old.
I used to write SSD firmware (not Crucial though!) and new code can always be buggy despite our best effort to test it thoroughly. However many of the SSD companies have carried their firmware through multiple generations now and the code has matured during that time so I expect this to be less of an issue. The bigger issue now will be a process shrink resulting in NAND issue that has not been identified before to be properly mitigated by the controller/firmware so I personally when a year for a product to mature before buying it.
