LANSING, Mich. – The parents of the Oxford High School shooter are officially headed to trial on involuntary manslaughter charges after the state Supreme Court on Tuesday denied their appeals to get their cases thrown out.
The mother and father of the Oxford shooter, Jennifer and James Crumbley, have each been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Nov. 3, 2021, school shooting. Both parents are accused of neglecting their son, buying him the gun used in the shooting, and failing to take steps that could have prevented the massacre.
UPDATE: Trial of Oxford shooter’s parents scheduled for January 2024
Attorneys have made several attempts to get the parents’ cases thrown out. The latest effort came in May when the parents’ attorneys appealed a Michigan Court of Appeals ruling to the Michigan Supreme Court. The appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling that sent the parents to trial.
On Oct. 3, the state’s high court denied both parents’ appeals, saying the court was “not persuaded that the question presented should be reviewed by this court.” The Michigan Supreme Court’s decision means both parents are headed for trial.
The decision to go to trial sets a new precedent in Michigan law: James and Jennifer Crumbley are the first parents of a mass school shooter to face charges in connection with the shooting in the United States.
It was unclear when exactly they would stand trial.
The charges they face
James and Jennifer Crumbley have been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the four students murdered by their son: 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana; 16-year-old Tate Myre; 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; and 17-year-old Justin Shilling.
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.
Why they were charged
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 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 the parents 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 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 parents handled their circumstances poorly.
The defense said then that the parents 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.
Shooter heading for sentencing
As the shooter’s parents wait to stand trial, the shooter himself was just cleared last week to be sentenced to life in prison without parole, despite his age.
The shooter -- convicted of 24 felonies for the school shooting, including first-degree murder and terrorism causing death -- is scheduled to be sentenced in early December.
The shooter and his parents have all been lodged at the Oakland County Jail for nearly two years, though officials said they have been kept separate and without contact.
More: Oxford shooter can be sentenced to life in prison without parole, judge decides