Mother of Oxford school shooter asks judge to throw out conviction
02 December 2024
James Crumbley (left) and Jennifer Crumbley (right) sit for sentencing in Oakland County on April 9, 2024. (Photo: Anna Liz Nichols)
The mother of the Oxford High School shooter who was convicted earlier this year on criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter for the four students her son killed back in 2021, is asking a judge to throw out her conviction citing a “sham prosecution grounded in prosecutorial overreach”.
The filing, which seeks to gain an acquittal or a new trial for Jennifer Crumbley, was made to the Oakland County Circuit Court Monday and challenges a historic conviction wherein the parents of a school shooter were held criminally responsible for the lives lost in a shooting.
The shooter, aged 15 at the time of Nov. 30, 2021 shooting, was charged as an adult and sentenced to life without possibility of parole last December on charges involving the murder of fellow students Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Justin Shilling, 17, and Madisyn Baldwin, 17.
Crumbley and her husband James Crumbley were sentenced earlier this year to 10 to 15 years in prison for their responsibility for the shooting taking place.
But the shooter’s mother had no responsibility for the shooting, Michael Dezsi, an attorney for Crumbley reasoned in Monday’s filing.
There are a buffet of reasons Crumbley’s trial was a “sham”, Dezsi wrote, including the prosecution failing to share secret agreements it made with key witnesses, a lack of legal responsibility for the killings and inconsistencies in her prosecution.
Arguments against the prosecution’s handling of the case zero in on the unknowns surrounding “proffer agreements” made with Shawn Hopkins, a school counselor and Nick Ejak, the former dean of students, who met with the shooter and his parents the morning of the shooting to discuss a drawing the shooter made on an assignment that displayed a gun and a bloody body amongst other images and words.
The agreements by the Oakland County Prosecutor’s office, released after the convictions of both parents, outlined that Hopkins and Ejack’s cooperation in discussing the events of the shooting did not entail any promises to be protected from future prosecution should the office choose to raise such actions.
But those agreements and the totality of what prosecutor’s learned were never shared with the defense during the trials for the parents which Dezsi said hindered the defense’s ability to cross examine the two school employees thoroughly.
Dezsi’s arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny, Oakland County Chief Assistant Prosecutor David Williams said in a written statement Monday, pointing at the multiple cries for help the shooter made that the parents were aware of in the months leading up to the shooting and their failure to secure the gun used for the shooting.
“The Michigan Court of Appeals has already reviewed the legal issues raised by Jennifer Crumbley and rejected them. Where there are egregious facts like these – where two parents ignored the obvious signs that their son was in crisis, bought him a gun and failed to secure it, and then failed to disclose the existence of the gun or take their son home when he drew out his plans, including writing “blood everywhere” with a picture of a gun and a body with bleeding bullet wounds, they can and should be prosecuted,” Williams said.
Out of the nearly 2,000 students that were at Oxford High School, only one parent called 911 after the shooting because they suspected their child was the shooter, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald argued during the prosecution of the shooter’s father.
During both parents’ prosecutions, the juries were advised by the judge that they didn’t all have to agree on the prosecution’s two avenues to secure involuntary manslaughter charges, either that the parents failed at controlling or monitoring their minor son to prevent him from harming others or the parents were negligent in securing the gun used, making the shooting possible.
But the jury should have had to be unanimous on determining guilt, Dezsi reasoned, as a difference of opinion on guilt should have resulted in a hung jury. Not requiring uniformity in the jury’s decision was “patently incorrect and contrary to the Michigan Constitution”, Dezsi said.
Also, as the shooter was charged as an adult, Dezsi argues that it was inconsistent for the prosecution to assert that Crumbley bore responsibility to keep her minor child from harming others.
“The obvious inconsistency in the prosecution’s theories is demonstrated by the fact that it wishes for the shooter to be viewed in the eyes of the law as an adult. But as to the charges of involuntary manslaughter, the prosecution is arguing that Mrs. Crumbley is responsible for the same murders committed by her son because he was a minor child and she failed to control him,” Dezsi wrote.
And while Crumbley’s son is being treated “both as a child and as an adult for purposes of the same murders” in an “inconsistent” manner to gain three convictions for the same murders, Dezci asserted, the argument that Crumbley bares any legal responsibility to the victims of the shooting is non-existent.
Crumbley “had no connection whatsoever with any of the victims” Dezsi reasoned and none of the victims had entrusted themselves to the control or protection of Crumbley. To the contrary, the school bears a level of legal responsibility for students while they’re at school.
“Even if the Court were to conclude that Mrs. Crumbley owed a legal duty upon which she could be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter, any such duty was suspended under the doctrine of in loco parentis because her son was under the control and supervision of school officials at the time of the shooting,” Dezsi wrote.
The defense teams of the shooter’s parents argued in their cases that the prosecutions of the parents, marking new legal territory, will make parents afraid of being held liable for the actions of their children that they could never have foreseen.
“It was unforeseeable; no one expected this,” Shannon Smith, a lawyer for Crumbley, said in her closing arguments during the trial in February. “No one could have expected this, including Mrs. Crumbley.”
Parents are scared, McDonald said in a written statement Monday, but for entirely different reasons.
*Parents everywhere are worried. But they are not worried about being prosecuted, they are worried about their kids being shot at school,” McDonald said. “James and Jennifer Crumbley are the rare, grossly negligent exception, and twenty-four jurors unanimously agreed they are responsible for the deaths of Hana, Madisyn, Tate, and Justin. Holding them accountable for their role is one important step in making our schools safer.”
Much of the defense for Crumbley revolved around the assertion that she didn’t know what her son was planning and she was in fact an attentive and caring parent, a focus that didn’t involve meaningful efforts to tackle the lack of legal standing the prosecution had in the case, Dezsi wrote.
In his appeal to the conviction, Dezsi said Crumbley’s defense’s “failure to raise a meritorious defense based on the lack of any recognized legal duty owed by Mrs. Crumbley to the victims of the shooting causing her to be convicted of a non-existent crime” is grounds to assert that she had ineffective assistance of counsel and the conviction should be thrown out.
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