Jennifer Crumbley speaks before she is sentenced on involuntary manslaughter charges in Oakland County Circuit Court on April 9, 2024. (Photo: Anna Liz Nichols)
The mother of the Oxford High School shooter wants Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald removed from the case in her latest attempt to overturn her involuntary manslaughter conviction and receive a new trial linked to the attack that killed four students.
That’s according to a motion filed Wednesday by attorney Michael Dezsi, who is representing Jennifer Crumbley. She, along with her husband James Crumbley, were sentenced last year to at least 10 years in prison after they were found criminally responsible for the Nov. 30, 2021 shooting that took the lives of Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Justin Shilling, 17, and Madisyn Baldwin, 17.
Juries in separate trials for the Crumbleys determined that their actions leading up to the shooting made the killings possible, including failing to secure the firearm that was purchased for their son only four days before the shooting. Their convictions were the first in which parents of a school shooter were held criminally responsible for the lives lost in a shooting.
Their son Ethan, 15 at the time of the murders, was sentenced to life in prison. All three defendants are appealing their convictions.
The motion filed Wednesday seeks to have McDonald, as well as her office, either removed or disqualified from any further proceedings in Jennifer Crumbley’s case.
“The Oakland County Prosecutor has demonstrated that she cannot be trusted to prosecute this case consistent with the constitutional, legal, and ethical duties imposed upon her office. Since the inception of this case, the Prosecutor has violated the Court Rules, entered into secret agreements with two star prosecution witnesses, and has unethically engaged two public relations firms to run a smear campaign against the Crumbleys in an effort to sway public opinion and taint the jury pool,” stated the motion.
Dezsi alleges the “smear campaign” by McDonald’s office was orchestrated after spending nearly $36,000 for a public relations firm in the two weeks following the shooting, as well as “$100,000 of taxpayer money to retain Moment Strategies, LLC, a second public relations firm whose stated goal was to ‘implement a national communications strategy’ and to provide ‘crisis communication… to each group of key stakeholders.’ (whatever that means).”
Dezsi, in a press conference to announce the motion, again attacked the use of proffer agreements for two of the prosecution witnesses.
“It means that they asked them to come in and talk to the prosecutors with the understanding and the agreement that anything that those witnesses said could not be used against them in any criminal proceeding,” he told reporters, further alleging that the prosecution had failed to produce those agreements to the defense.
“It is our position that the jury should have been made aware that those witnesses were testifying…pursuant to these immunity agreements and that if the jury would have known, that they certainly could have reached a different outcome in the case,” said Dezsi.
The agreements, which are commonly utilized in complex prosecutions, were 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.
In response, McDonald said the arguments in the motion have already been heard and deemed to be inconsequential. She also defended the use of a crisis communication team to assist in handling a case that generated intense media interest.
“The judge has already heard these arguments and has deemed most of them irrelevant. It’s disrespectful to the victims, their families, and the people in the community. It’s disrespectful of the court system. It’s disrespectful to the jury and the prosecution team. I stand by the work we did,” she said in a press release
McDonald also called the accusation that her office engaged in a smear campaign “ludicrous,” noting the firms were hired to handle crisis communications from an “overwhelming number of media inquiries,” and that the motion’s true purpose was to divert attention away from Jennifer Crumbley’s actions.
“Jennifer Crumbley told the jury that she wouldn’t have changed a thing. We didn’t need a smear campaign to convict Jennifer Crumbley, her own actions and words were more than enough,” said McDonald.
Also responding to the motion was Steve St. Juliana, the father of Hana St. Juliana, who was killed in the shooting.
“Stop trying to make [Jennifer Crumbley] the victim. My daughter is the one that was murdered because of her negligence,” he said.
This latest motion to remove McDonald from the case comes as Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews prepares to rule on a previous request by Dezsi for a new trial for Jennifer Crumbley for what he has claimed was “prosecutorial misconduct” surrounding the proffer agreements.
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