OXFORD, Mich. – In an effort to dismiss their case before heading to trial, the parents of the Oxford High School shooter have appealed a ruling binding them over to trial to the Michigan Supreme Court.
UPDATE: Oxford shooter’s parents heading to trial after state Supreme Court denies appeal
Attorneys for the Oxford shooter’s mother and father are asking the Michigan Supreme Court to reverse a court decision that’s sending them to trial. It’s the second time the parents have appealed to the state’s high court in hopes of quashing the involuntary manslaughter charges they face in connection with the shooting.
The latest appeal comes after the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from a lower court, which sends James and Jennifer Crumbley to trial. Their defense attorneys continue to argue that the prosecution cannot establish causation between the parents’ actions, or inactions, and the mass shooting carried out by their son. Prosecutors say, however, that the parents failed to take several steps that could have prevented the shooting.
James and Jennifer Crumbley both face four counts of involuntary manslaughter for each of the four students murdered in the Oxford shooting on Nov. 30, 2021: 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana; 16-year-old Tate Myre; 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; and 17-year-old Justin Shilling.
Why Crumbleys face involuntary manslaughter
Involuntary manslaughter is one of the lowest homicide-related charges someone can receive after a person is killed. Involuntary manslaughter happens when a person’s death resulted from another person’s negligent or criminal actions.
To qualify as involuntary manslaughter, the death was not intentional or planned, but rather technically accidental. Still, the person charged with involuntary manslaughter is believed to be responsible for the death, despite their intentions.
An involuntary manslaughter charge in Michigan is a felony and carries a punishment of up to 15 years in prison, and/or a fine of up to $7,500.
James and Jennifer Crumbley each face four involuntary manslaughter charges stemming from the Oxford shooting.
The prosecution accuses the Crumbleys of being grossly negligent toward their son by failing to provide proper care when he reported having hallucinations and struggling with his mental health. Instead, the parents purchased a handgun for their son and failed to address concerns presented by school staff leading up to the shooting, prosecutors argue.
Gross negligence in Michigan means that a person willfully disregarded the results to others “that might follow from an act or failure to act,” according to the state. In this case, the Crumbley parents are accused of demonstrating a significant lack of concern about their son’s emotional state and actions and what he might do to himself or others without proper intervention from them.
Prosecutors believe James and Jennifer Crumbley knew that their son posed a danger to others, and failed to provide “ordinary care” that could have prevented the mass shooting. According to prosecutors, that ordinary care could’ve looked like the Crumbleys taking their son home from school when called in for a meeting the morning of the shooting, or looking in his backpack during that meeting for the recently purchased gun, or storing that gun securely at their home, among other things.
Michigan law doesn’t define one way in which ordinary care is exercised, prosecutors said in March. Parents do a have “duty of care,” however, which is their legal obligation to exercise reasonable care for their children -- which looks like providing food, housing, schooling, health care (including mental health) and the like.
Prosecutors have argued the parents neglected their son by failing to provide him with appropriate mental health care in the months before the shooting. During the Court of Appeals hearing, the defense agreed that the Crumbley parents handled their circumstances poorly.
The defense said then that the Crumbleys could have gotten their son into therapy, and said the parents weren’t well equipped to handle several factors in this case. ” ... I will concede that these parents made tremendously bad decisions,” defense attorney Shannon Smith said, in part, in March.
Still, the defense argues that the parents could not have foreseen the mass shooting based on what they knew. On the other side, prosecutors say that the parents had significant knowledge about their son’s poor mental state and his interest in guns and shooting, and could have foreseen such a tragedy.
The defense is still hoping to get the case thrown out, arguing that the evidence against the parents isn’t sufficient to meet the legal standards of the charges against them.
A look at the specifics
The Court of Appeals hearing that took place before the court made its decision on March 23 offered a closer look at the legal specifics being considered by the judges.
The defense is arguing that the prosecution’s evidence is not enough to support conviction of James and Jennifer Crumbley. But judges have also pointed out that that point is more commonly considered during and/or after a trial, not before.
After hearing arguments from both sides and asking several questions, the appellate court maintained that the parents should go to trial.
Part of the involuntary manslaughter charges involves alleged negligence on behalf of the Crumbleys.
In Michigan, criminal negligence is defined as the “failure to use reasonable care with respect to a material element of an offense to avoid consequences that are the foreseeable outcome of the person’s conduct with respect to a material element of an offense and that threaten or harm the safety of another.”
“Foresee” is a keyword here. Whether or not the parents could have foreseen fatal mass shooting was the largest debate in the appellate courtroom in March.
The appellate judges did not say definitively then if they believe James and Jennifer Crumbley could have foreseen the mass shooting carried out by their son. At least two of the three judges did say, however, they believe causation would be easy to prove in this case.
“... this is involuntary manslaughter – which is malice-free homicide. In this sort of case, all we’re really looking for is foreseeability, aren’t we?” said appeals court Judge Christopher Yates.
“We’ll grant you that you have to show factual cause and proximate cause. I think factual cause, at least under probable cause standard, is not even worth discussing today,” the judge continued. “But, in terms of proximate cause: Isn’t it just simply a question of foreseeability? And, as Judge Murray says, something beyond negligence can be foreseeable, and it seems to me these sorts of facts are exactly where it would be foreseeable.”
The legal issue of “negligence” is broken down into a few sub-categories, including “causation.” There are multiple types of causation, including factual and proximate.
Factual causation determines if the incident -- in this case, a mass shooting -- would have occurred without the action or inaction of the defendants. The appellate judges seemed to agree that factual causation is obvious in this case, saying that it’d be easy to prove that if the parents had taken their son out of school the morning of the shooting, the Oxford shooting wouldn’t have happened.
Proximate causation determines if there is a cause behind the incident that can hold the defendant legally liable in that incident. Proximate cause was debated in March. The prosecution said then that in the lower court’s hearing of the case, the court focused more on factual causation than on proximate causation.
The defense argues that there isn’t any argument for any causation between the Crumbley parents and the Oxford shooting. Should the parents go to trial, it is likely this topic will be strongly debated.
In a criminal case, prosecutors must prove that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt -- the highest level of proof there is. This essentially means that the proof must show a great certainty that the defendant is guilty.
What’s next
It is unknown if the Michigan Supreme Court will hear the Crumbley’s appeal or not. In the May 17 application, defense attorneys did request to make oral arguments in front of the justices.
The Michigan Supreme Court could take several different routes. The court could decide to hear the case or not, or to consider the case and make a decision on its own without hearing arguments.
If the high court declines to hear the case, or denies the appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruling would stand and the Crumbleys would go to trial.
If the parents are bound over for trial, it would set a new precedent in Michigan law. The Crumbley parents are the first ever parents of a mass school shooter to face charges in connection with the shooting in the United States.
Their son, the Oxford shooter, has been convicted of 24 felonies after changing his not guilty plea to guilty. He awaits sentencing. He is the first mass school shooter in the U.S. to be convicted of terrorism.
---> Read more: When will the Oxford High School shooter be sentenced?
Court filings here
Below are the complete appeal applications filed on May 17. The documents are essentially the same for both parents.
Application for Jennifer Crumbley:
Application for James Crumbley: