OXFORD, Mich. – Tempers flared at the end of the second day of Jennifer Crumbley’s trial, as the defense and prosecutors got into a shouting match about jokes in the courtroom and the “parading” of evidence.
Judge Cheryl A. Matthews dismissed the jury at 4:46 p.m. Friday after nearly seven hours of testimony from former Oakland County Sheriff’s Office computer crimes expert Edward Wagrowski.
Wagrowski’s testimony included text messages, videos, voicemails, location data, and more from the months and days leading up to and following the Oxford High School shooting. Prosecutors were using messages to try to prove that Crumbley, who is facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter, was grossly negligent in the shooting carried out by her son.
After the jury’s exit, lead defense attorney Shannon Smith alerted the judge that she has several objections to evidence that will be used by one of the prosecution’s future witnesses, a officer.
Smith and assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Marc Keast traded jabs about how each side has handled the exchange and submission of evidence. Smith accuses the prosecution of dumping evidence on her in a way that makes it difficult for her to do her job. Prosecutors claim they’ve gone above and beyond to help the defense.
Exchange of exhibit 423
They also discussed the admission of exhibit 423, which is the full list of Facebook messages exchanged between Jennifer Crumbley and her husband in 2021. Both sides agreed to submit that evidence during proceedings on Friday.
But there are certain parts that need to be redacted to omit topics that aren’t supposed to be used during the trial, such as the parents’ alcohol use and possible infidelity and the cleanliness of their house.
“Your Honor, then I just need them to send me this proposed exhibit,” Smith said.
“You have it,” Keast said. “You already have it. You had it in January of 2022.”
Smith said she needs the original file of exhibit 423 and offered to go through and make the redactions. The judge said Smith can’t just redact the file without the prosecution’s input.
That’s when Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald stepped in, and the argument escalated.
“The truth should matter,” McDonald said. “She has 423. It’s the entire Facebook message string between Jennifer Crumbley and James Crumbley. It’s the thing that she piles up. She has that string.”
“If the court would like, we can provide the proof of service first thing Monday morning,” Keast said.
“No, I do have it in the evidence,” Smith said. “I don’t have it -- they’re talking about it as if they’ve given me a 423. They haven’t. It’s buried in the stacks of evidence. That’s fine, I’ll dig it out. I will go through it tonight. I will let them know what I want redacted. All I want is redactions.”
McDonald cut Smith off and said, “We provided a digital copy. I don’t understand.”
“It’s in the thumb drive,” Keast said.
“Yeah, they handed it to me today while we’ve been in court for eight hours,” Smith said.
Jokes in courtroom
The judge said Smith is the one who asked for it to be admitted. She tried to wrap up the conversation, but McDonald said they had “a couple more things” they wanted to address.
“One thing I think is important: I ask this court to instruct counsel to show the appropriate decorum in this particular case,” Keast said. “The jokes, indicating, ‘I’m going to kill myself’ in the joking manner. ‘I’m drinking five bottles of wine.’”
“It’s just, there are parents who had their children murdered in this courtroom,” McDonald said. “We are the people who communicate with them after we leave here.”
The jokes the prosecutors are referencing were made by Smith during Friday’s proceedings.
At one point, Matthews stopped Smith during cross examination and asked her to disassemble a tall stack of papers before it falls over, calling it the “Leaning Tower of Pisa.”
The judge told Smith she doesn’t want her to have to spend the whole weekend re-organizing all her documents, saying she should instead drink a glass of wine in her sweatpants.
“I’m going to drink five bottles of wine,” Smith joked.
Later in the cross examination, Smith was in the middle of a line of questioning, but confusion and logistical issues kept coming up, as her pieces of evidence were not in order. She also needed to show a redacted piece of evidence that could only be shown by the prosecution. So Keast clicked through some of the messages for her.
At one point, Smith said, “I’m going to kill myself,” and asked for a few minutes to get her exhibits organized. She was clearly frustrated that the disorganization of the exhibits was keeping her from making her point.
Argument escalates
Matthews took the blame for the wine joke, pointing out that she was the one who mentioned it first.
“But making a joke about killing yourself in this courtroom at this time,” McDonald said.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Smith said. “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I did not mean it like that.”
“She can stop yelling,” McDonald said. “I don’t want to do that right now.”
“I did not mean it like that, and they know I didn’t mean it like that,” Smith said.
“We’re responding to, literally just sitting here, the amount of messages we get from victims in the community,” McDonald said. “I just think just to be an abundance of respect and caution, if we could just not say things like that. I’m not accusing anyone of any malice or any bad intent, I’m just asking that we just not engage in that because this is hard enough for the people who are sitting here now and who will be sitting here next week.”
“I understand,” Matthew said. “It’s very hard.”
“Your Honor, I am not joking around about anything,” Smith said.
“OK, I think it was a slip of the tongue,” Matthews said. “It was a slip of the tongue. Emotions are running high.”
The judge also reiterated that people need to stop saying the shooter’s name in court.
“But, Your Honor, I do want to make a point: I’m not making an objection because my emotions are running high,” McDonald said. “In fact, I’m not having an emotional response here. I am simply asking that we be respectful to victims. That’s it.”
“Your Honor, I am being respectful,” Smith said. “That is implying I’m being disrespectful. Me saying I’m going to kill myself -- I didn’t mean in any way to offend these families.”
“I know you didn’t,” Matthews said. “It was a slip of the tongue. She’s just--”
“It was absolutely not related to them,” Smith said. “This shooting is awful. It’s the prosecution that’s parading all of this (evidence) up here and putting the families through this.”
“Parading?” Keast said. “This shooting is a result of the defendant’s gross negligence. That is the case.”
“They’re the ones putting the victims through re-seeing all of this over and over and over,” Smith said.
“Woah,” Matthews said. “Everybody needs to go home. Everybody needs to go home, alright?”
