DETROIT — A verdict could arrive as early as Thursday in the “bad parenting” involuntary manslaughter trial of James Crumbley, a Michigan mass shooter’s father whose trial outcome could establish a national precedent for holding parents accountable for the actions of their homicidal children.
James Crumbley and his wife are the first parents in America charged in a mass school shooting as prosecutors seek to hold them both criminally liable for buying their son, Ethan, the gun that he used in the massacre, and, for never telling the school about the weapon when they were summoned over his troubling behavior. Jennifer Crumbley was convicted last month.
James Crumbley is accused of causing the deaths of four students murdered by his son in the 2021 Oxford High School mass shooting.
In closing arguments this week, the prosecution and defense hammered away at the same themes they did in the wife’s case, with one side maintaining Crumbley was a careless, negligent father who bought a troubled son a gun and failed to secure it. Defense lawyers maintained the dad never saw any signs that his son was mentally ill or would ever harm someone, that the gun wasn’t a gift his son could use freely, and that it was hidden.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald implored the jury in an impassioned speech to hold Crumbley accountable for failing to take “tragically small measures” that could have saved the lives of four children.
Crumbley, she stressed, could have put a cable lock on the gun his son sneaked out of the home and used in the shooting, or taken his son home from school when the boy showed signs of desperation in a drawing he made.
But James Crumbley did nothing, she said.
‘I say their names because they matter,’ prosecutor says of victims
Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, pleaded guilty and is serving life in prison without parole. In his rampage on Nov. 30, 2021, he killed Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17, and Justin Shilling, 17, and wounded six other students and a teacher.
“Remember that he didn’t just fail in his duty to his son,” McDonald said of the father. “He failed in his duty to protect Hana, and Justin and Madisyn and Tate. I don’t say their names to evoke sympathy. I say their names because they matter. They matter,” she said, choking up while pointing her finger at the courtroom.
“And that is why we are here . . . Because if James Crumbley had done even the smallest of things, like the 10-second cable lock or gone home or took responsibility for his kid who was in trouble, those kids wouldn’t have been shot and killed in that school on that day.”
McDonald urged the jury to focus on what James Crumbley did not do in the days, weeks, and months before his son shot up his school.
McDonald argued that Crumbley ignored a son who was mentally struggling and asking for help, and bought him a gun instead.
“James Crumbley is not on trial for what his son did. He’s on trial for what he did and didn’t do,” said McDonald, who later would stress: “We are absolutely here about what happened in that school that day.”
Defense: The charges are about hindsight
The defense disagreed.
Defense attorney Mariell Lehman began her closing argument by acknowledging the horrors that occurred on Nov. 30, 2021, that lives were tragically ended and ruined.
“We can agree that you heard a lot about what happened inside Oxford High School. This case is not about what happened inside Oxford High School. This case is about what happened outside Oxford High School … about what James Crumbley knew on or before Nov. 30, 2021,” Lehman said.
She stressed, repeatedly, that this case is about hindsight.
“The prosecution is asking you to second guess the decisions” of James Crumbley, she said, maintaining that no one who met with the shooter in the hours before the massacre could have predicted what was going to happen.
“As (school counselor) Shawn Hopkins told you, ‘It’s easy to look at things in hindsight,’ ” she said, referring to the counselor who concluded shortly before the massacre that the shooter posed no threat to anyone, despite Hopkins getting five alerts from teachers within 24 hours of the shooting about the teen showing troubling behavior.
The school officials didn’t think he was a danger, she stressed, and neither did the boy’s father.
“You saw no evidence that James Crumley had any knowledge that his son was a danger to anyone … that his son was planning a shooting, that his son knew where the gun was hidden, and that he had handled guns unsupervised,” she said.
“Still, the prosecution wants you to find that James could foresee that his son was a danger to others,” Lehman said.
“They want you to find that James could have foreseen this,” she said, despite him having no information at the time.
“He had no idea what his son was planning to do,” Lehman argued. “In fact, no one that interacted with James Crumbley’s son on November 30th of 2021 knew what was going to happen a short time later. No one.”
‘It says, ‘Help me,’ How many times does this kid have to say it?’
McDonald became visibly incensed as she focused the jury’s attention on perhaps the most damning piece of evidence in the case: a troubling drawing the shooter made on the morning before the shooting on his math worksheet. It features a gun, a human body bleeding, and the words: ‘The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
The boy’s parents were summoned to the school over the drawing, though the Crumbleys returned to their jobs after they met with the counselor and dean of students, vowing to get their son help within 48 hours. The school officials concluded the student was no threat to himself or others, and let him return to class.
Two hours later, the boy fired his first shot.
Had James Crumbley taken his son’s drawing more seriously and taken the boy home, McDonald argued, the tragedy could have been avoided.
“It says, ‘Help me,’ How many times does this kid have to say it?” McDonald argued, alleging the shooter had asked for help repeatedly in the past year, but no one did anything.
As for the dad’s claims that he had no idea that his son was begging for help, McDonald asked jurors to pay attention to what the dad did when he saw the words, ‘Help me’ on his worksheet.
He texted his wife, “WTF.”
But after meeting with school officials, James and Jennifer Crumbley went back to their jobs.
“Use common sense,” McDonald said. “It doesn’t make any sense to stand here and say someone had no idea that he needed help when he saw on a page, ‘Help me.’ “
Lehman addressed why James Crumbley didn’t bring his son home that day, saying the professionals at school wanted the boy to see someone so that his sadness wouldn’t get worse, “not that ‘he had to see someone right now. It’s an emergency. He has to see someone right now.’ That’s not what was said.”
Rather, she said, the school officials said they would follow up in 48 hours.
She also referenced testimony that Crumbley drove past his house four times while DoorDashing, but never stopped once to check for a missing gun after having seen his son’s disturbing note.
A ‘perfect kid’; a ‘sweet kid’
“Why would he? He didn’t know. … He didn’t know what his son was planning,” Lehman said. “He didn’t know that his son knew where the guns were, and he didn’t know that his son had somehow gained access to those guns, or a gun. He didn’t know. So why would he go home?” Lehman argued.
Lehman also asked the jury to consider James Crumbley’s comments to police about his son, telling officers that there weren’t any issues with his son, that he was a “perfect” kid.
“Even if you have a question” about the dad’s opinion of his son, she said to the jury, consider the testimony of Assistant Principal Kristy Gibson-Marshall, who encountered the shooter during his rampage.
“The shooter gets closer and she realizes that it’s James’ son. And her first thought is, ‘It can’t be right.’ With a gun in his hand … she didn’t think that that was right. Even in those moments,” Lehman said, noting the assistant principal also called the boy “a sweet kid.”
‘Please follow the law’
Lehman also urged the jury to consider James Crumbley’s cooperation with police after the shooting, when he told them where the gun was originally located, shared details about his son’s life and expressed regret.
“In that interview, you heard James say, ‘I wish we would have taken him home,’ ” Lehman said.
Lehman also sought to dispel the narrative that the gun belonged to the shooter.
“If it really was his gun, why was it hidden in James’ bedroom?” Lehman asked jurors. “Not only in the bedroom, but in a location that James’ son was not aware of.”
Lehman also urged the jury to recall the testimony of the assistant principal, and consider what she thought when the shooter got close to her: “This can’t be right … she even tried to talk to him, because she just can’t believe that James’ son was the shooter. And when he wouldn’t respond, she realized, ‘it must be him’.”
Lehman told the jurors they heard from a dozen witnesses, stressing: “None of them told you that James knew what his son was planning.”
The journal
McDonald urged jurors to remember the shooter’s journal, noting the teen wrote he was “begging” his dad for a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun, and eventually got it. She cited this excerpt:
“First off, I got my gun. It’s a Sig Sauer … The shooting is tomorrow. I have access to the gun and ammo.”
She repeated that part twice, that he had access.
McDonald also said that 32 shots were fired in the school that day. How do we know this was foreseeable? she asked.
The shooter says so in his journal, she argued as she cited the following entries:
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“I have zero help for my mental problems, and it’s causing me to shoot up the f—– school.”
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“I want help, but my parents won’t listen to me, so I can’t get any help.”
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“My parents won’t listen to me about help or a therapist.”
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She also repeated a text the shooter sent to his friend in which he wrote: “I actually asked my dad to take me to the doctor the other day, and he just gave me some pills and said to ‘suck it up.’ “
What the prosecutors didn’t show jurors
Lehman, however, urged the jury to remember another excerpt in the journal, which reads:
“I will have to find where my dad hid my 9 mm before I can shoot (up) the school.”
This, Lehman argued, showed that the boy did not have access to the gun as the prosecution had argued.
Lehman also urged the jury to focus on what the prosecution didn’t and couldn’t show: that James Crumbley knew what his son was writing and planning in his journal.
“If James knew what was in that journal, the prosecution would have told you that. If James knew that his son had gained access to his firearms, the prosecution would have told you that. You definitely would have seen it.”
“But you didn’t, because James didn’t know,” she said, stressing that “can be your reasonable doubt.”
According to testimony, James Crumbley said the gun was hidden in an armoire in his bedroom, unloaded, and the bullets were stored in a separate drawer.
Lehman asked the jury to remember the testimony of a federal agent, who said that guns can be stored in a variety of ways.
“If James had known his son was accessing guns without his permission, prosecutors would have presented that information. But you didn’t see that because it isn’t true, James didn’t know. This can be your reasonable doubt,” Lehman said.
Lehman also touched on the problem of gun violence in America, telling jurors that amid the nation’s epidemic of gun deaths and mass killings, school shootings in particular have devastated communities. She said neither she nor her client dispute the horror and impact of the Oxford school shooting.
But the charges and allegations against James Crumbley, she stressed, were based on “assumptions and hindsight.”
“Still, the prosecution wants you to find that James could foresee that his son was a danger to others and that James acted in a grossly negligent manner or breached a duty that he owed to other people, despite having no information at the time,” Lehman said.
McDonald installs cable lock — ‘That takes less than 10 seconds’
Because the prosecution has the burden of proof, McDonald got the last word with the jury, a time she spent blasting James Crumbley in an emotional and impassioned speech that focused on “tragically small things” that she believes could have saved four lives.
McDonald then conducted a demonstration, showing jurors how easy it is to put a cable lock on a gun.
“This is the murder weapon,” she said, pointing at the 9mm in the courtroom. “This is a cable lock … we know a cable lock was in the home. We know it was provided.”
McDonald then installed the lock.
“This is me inserting a cable lock. That takes less than 10 seconds, 10 seconds. … It was right there. Ten seconds of the easiest simplest thing.”
She also argued that it’s not difficult to conclude that a 15-year-old who spends a lot of time home alone could not find the weapon.
“It wasn’t hidden,” she said. “We know that James Crumbley went home and looked for a gun when he heard there was an active shooter … that’s foreseeability … and that’s what I had to prove.”
“This case is not a statement about guns. It’s not about parental responsibility,” she said, adding: “We are not responsible for everything our kids do. This case is not inconsistent with that, it just isn’t. This is a very egregious and rare, rare set of facts.”
And they involve a parent, she stressed, who was grossly negligent and consequently robbed Hana, Justin, Madison and Tate of their young lives.
Contact Tresa Baldas: [email protected]
Contact Gina Kaufman: [email protected]. Follow her on X: @ReporterGina.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: James Crumbley verdict: Jury to decide fate of Michigan shooter’s dad
