OXFORD, Mich. – The trial started Thursday morning for Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of the Oxford High School shooter, after a jury was seated on Wednesday afternoon.
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---> Live updates: Trial for mother of Oxford High School shooter
Oakland County officials announced Monday that Jennifer Crumbley will be tried first. Her husband’s trial is expected to begin in early March.
Jennifer and James Crumbley are both facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter charges, and they were originally supposed to be tried together.
But in November, a judge granted their request for separate trials. Now, two juries will attempt to determine the role played by each parent in the November 2021 shooting.
---> EXPLAINER: What to expect in a criminal trial
The manslaughter charges stem from the deaths of four Oxford High School students: 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana; 16-year-old Tate Myre; 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin; and 17-year-old Justin Shilling. Prosecutors will try to prove that James and Jennifer Crumbley failed to take steps that could have prevented their son from opening fire in the hallways of the high school.
They would be the first parents of a U.S. mass shooter to be charged in connection with their child’s crimes.
The shooter was sentenced last month to life in prison without the chance of parole.
What is 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 by the accused, 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.
Prosecution’s case
The prosecution accuses James and Jennifer Crumbley 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 a March 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.
Some evidence to be excluded
A judge has granted a request from the parents of the Oxford High School shooter, allowing certain evidence related to the shooter to be excluded from their upcoming trials.
Lawyers for the parents asked Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews to exclude some evidence from trial to prevent unnecessary prejudice among the jury and ensure a fair trial. Judge Matthews partly approved their requests, deciding that the following evidence may not be used in the parents’ trials: the parents’ infidelity; content from the shooter’s additional Instagram accounts; the messiness of their home, and the fact that alcohol and marijuana were present there; the shooter’s internet searches; and the shooter’s Nazi coin.
Much of the evidence barred from trial was excluded because of their relevancy, or lack thereof, or because it’s believed the parents had no knowledge of certain things, such as the shooter’s multiple social media accounts. There was one piece of evidence, however, that the judge did not rule on at the time that is being revisited.
Lawyers for mother Jennifer Crumbley filed a new motion last November requesting evidence of the shooter’s alleged bird mutilation and killing be excluded from her approaching trial.
“It is clear that the shooter mutilated baby birds on more than one occasion, texted a friend about details of mutilating birds, videorecorded himself doing so, and photographed vile and disgusting images of his actions,” the motion reads, in part. However, the defense argues that the shooter “intentionally hid” any evidence of bird mutilation from his parents.
“The shooter’s ‘bird evidence’ is irrelevant to whether Mrs. Crumbley committed involuntary manslaughter, especially considering there is no evidence to show she was aware of the shooter’s disgusting acts with birds.” The defense goes on to say that due to the horrific nature of the evidence, admitting it in court would only serve to “inflame the passions of a jury.”
The judge granted that motion in December.
Judge Matthews had also previously ruled against part of the defense’s earlier motion to exclude certain evidence. The court has said it will allow evidence related to violent video games played by the shooter; intoxication or drug use by the parents at the time of the shooting or when the shooter accessed the gun in their home; and the parents’ horseback riding.
Separate trials could come at cost
Attorneys for James and Jennifer Crumbley filed motions on Nov. 13, requesting they stand trial separately for the four counts of involuntary manslaughter they face in connection with the Oxford shooting. They were initially set to be tried together as co-defendants starting on Jan. 23, 2024.
The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office filed their responses with the Oakland County Circuit Court the same day, expressing support for the motions filed by the couple. But while agreeing the parents are legally entitled to separate trials, prosecutors say two trials will have a negative impact for many groups of people.
“The People admit that the defendant is entitled to a separate trial because some of the evidence introduced against the codefendant at trial would be damaging to the defendant,” the prosecutors’ filing reads. “Separate trials in this case come at significant cost to victims, witnesses, taxpayers, and the additional jurors who will serve. But the Constitution affords the defendant that right, and the People agree that the defendant is entitled to a separate trial.”
In their filings on Nov. 13, prosecutors said they agree that a conflict exists as it relates to jointly trying the shooter’s parents, but also said they raised the issue of a potential conflict on several occasions more than a year ago. Prosecutors previously sought to ensure the defendants knew of this conflict as they agreed to be represented by two separate attorneys who work under the same firm.
The judge ruled in favor of the parents, deciding that they can stand trial separately.
Shooter sentenced
The Oxford High School shooter was sentenced on Dec. 8, 2023, to life in prison without the chance for parole for murdering four students, injuring seven people, and launching a terrorist attack in 2021.
After hours of emotional testimony delivered at the shooter’s sentencing hearing, Oakland County Judge Kwamé Rowe handed down the harshest possible sentence to the now-17-year-old shooter. Just following the two-year anniversary of the Nov. 30, 2021 massacre, the shooter was sentenced to a life in prison for the 24 felonies he’s been convicted of.
The shooter will not ever be eligible for parole.
“The terror that he caused in the state of Michigan, and in Oxford, is a true act of terrorism. Respectfully, the defendant is the rare juvenile before this court,” Judge Rowe said, referencing the rarity of sentencing a minor to life in prison.
The judge said the court believes the sentence of life in prison is “in the best interest of justice, as well as proportionate to the needs of this case.”
---> Oxford school shooter sentenced to life in prison: Here’s what happened in court
