Jury selection for the trials of two Michigan parents began on Tuesday, with each facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter after their son opened fire at his school in 2021.
Per their request, 47-year-old James Crumbley and 45-year-old Jennifer Crumbley will be tried separately in Oakland County, where the court system is still trying to work out the logistics.
If the two trials run concurrently, it could help avoid one defendant having an advantage over the other, suggested law professor Jeffrey Swartz, a former county judge in Florida, according to NBC News. Regardless, Swartz predicted that both defendants would be looking out for themselves.
“If I’m projecting in this particular case, each parent will point the finger at the other. Which one knew about [their son’s] problems, who was responsible for hiding and securing the gun?” Swartz said, per NBC News.
A gag order issued in 2022 currently prevents defense attorneys and prosecutors from speaking to the press about the case. Nonetheless, convicting the defendants on involuntary manslaughter charges will depend on whether jury members believe they were unlawfully negligent and thus liable for their son’s murder of four of his fellow students.
As previously covered by The Dallas Express, on November 30, 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley took a 9mm Sig Sauer handgun into Oxford High School, which is located in a Detroit suburb. He shot 11 people, killing 15-year-old Justin Shilling, 16-year-old Tate Myre, 17-year-old Madisyn Baldwin, and 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana.
After pleading guilty to the mass shooting in October 2022, the young man was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The rare move by prosecutors to charge his parents in connection with the mass shooting stemmed from allegations that they ignored troubling signs that their son had murderous intent, helped him procure a weapon, and failed to act when his school flagged him for worrisome behavior.
Their son was reportedly caught by a teacher searching online for ammunition and drawing a depiction of a person being shot with the caption: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
“LOL, I’m not mad. You have to learn not to get caught,” his mother allegedly texted him in response to the former incident.
Ethan Crumbley has since spoken in defense of his parents.
“They did not know, and I did not tell them what I planned to do, so they are not at fault,” he said during his sentencing hearing last December, according to NBC News.
Both Swartz and Michael Kelly, a Michigan lawyer, agreed that the upcoming trials of the Crumbleys will center on the question of legal duty. On the morning of the shooting, James and Jennifer Crumbley were called in for a parent-teacher conference. While they were given an ultimatum to get their son psychological help within 48 hours or the school would notify Children’s Protective Services, the parents opted to leave their son in school that day. Similarly, the school administrators allowed this, with the school counselors reportedly believing he did not pose an immediate risk.
“I think evidence is going to boil down to when the parents and the school administrators are in the same room, and Ethan has yet to act,” said Kelly. “The big question is whose duty and whose job was it to do something?”