Attorney for Oxford shooter's mom wants 'overwhelmingly prejudicial' video of massacre barred from jury

The attorney for Jennifer Crumbley wants a judge to reconsider her order allowing a jury to see surveillance video that shows her son's massacre at Oxford High School, claiming it would be "overwhelmingly prejudicial" in the defendant's upcoming involuntary manslaughter trial.

On Monday, Jennifer Crumbley's attorney Shannon Smith said in a motion that the defense thought the video in question would be of the arrival of Jennifer and James Crumbley at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021, for a meeting with school officials over their son's conduct. So Smith asked Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews to reconsider her Friday order to allow prosecutors to show jurors video of the killing, along with testimony from three witnesses to the killings.

Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, James Crumbley, are charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with their son Ethan's Nov. 30, 2021, slayings of Oxford High School students Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; and Justin Shilling, 17. Ethan Crumbley was convicted of the killings and sentenced Dec. 8 to life in prison without parole.

The trial of either one or both of the killer's parents is set to begin Jan. 23 in Oakland Circuit Court in Pontiac. The Crumbleys were initially going to be tried together, but they asked for separate trials in November.

On Jan. 2, Jennifer Crumbley's attorney asked the judge to exclude the three witnesses. In the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office's Jan. 5 reply to the motion, Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keast wrote that "Crumbley suggests that the prosecution should be limited to showing a security camera video with no sound, taken from a distance, to prove that the four students were killed by her son."

The defendant's attorney wrote in the Monday filing: "Upon seeing this assertion, the defense realized the prosecution may intend to play the surveillance video of the actual shooting ... the defense has always believed the 11/30/21 video to be a completely different video."

According to the filing Monday, the defense thought the video that was going to be played for the jury showed Jennifer and James Crumbley arriving at the school at 10:37 a.m. the morning of the shooting to meet with their son and school officials, the filing said.

"This video is very relevant to the parent's cases as it includes footage of the parents and shows their whereabouts and timing," the filing said. "At trial, the meeting the Crumbleys had with the shooter and the school counselor will be highly relevant as the prosecution points to several actions and inactions of the parents during that specific time."

Oakland County Prosecutors did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the latest filing.

Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald's office argued in its filing that the prosecution has the burden of proving every element of the alleged crime, including the killing of the four students, even if the defense team stipulates to certain facts. The witnesses will testify about the killings, prosecutors argued.

In addition, the defense team plans to call witnesses who were in the high school on Nov. 30 and ask about interactions with the shooter, Keast said in the filing.

"The defendant should not be able to call those witnesses and then prevent the prosecution from asking questions about the shooting itself, or from calling other witnesses who were at the school to testify about their observation of, and interactions with the shooter," he wrote.

The case against the Crumbleys is among the first in which parents are accused of being criminally liable for their offspring's mass shooting. Oakland County prosecutors contend that the Crumbleys were criminally negligent by purchasing their son a gun for Christmas and by not listening to his concerns that his mental health was declining.

Prosecutors also say the parents were negligent by not taking their son home the day of the shooting after the meeting with school administrators that was called because of concerns about drawings and phrases on Ethan Crumbley's math worksheet.

In the Monday filing, Jennifer Crumbley's attorney said video showing the Crumbleys attending the meeting with school staff was relevant to the charges against them, but added, "video of the shooting itself is irrelevant to the actions or inactions of Mrs. Crumbley, and (is) so overwhelmingly prejudicial, Counsel was shocked ... when the Prosecution's response indicated they may play it."

It's unclear whether the defendants will be tried at the same time, but separately, with either one jury or two, or they if they'll stand trial separately with separate juries.

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