James Crumbley returns to court: I deserve a new trial, too

Yahoo

11-04-2025

James Crumbley, the convicted father of the Oxford High School shooter, is due back in court Friday, hoping to convince a judge to give him a new trial or set aside his conviction, while the prosecution will push to keep him behind bars.
At issue is whether Oakland County prosecutors unlawfully withheld from Crumbley the existence of proffer agreements that allegedly protected two of its star witnesses from being charged themselves over their actions before the Nov 30, 2021, shooting, if they agreed to testify. Crumbley argues he was entitled to this information, though the prosecution says it had no obligation to turn over the agreements, maintaining no immunity was offered to the two witnesses.
James Crumbley also is questioning why his son wasn't ordered to testify in his trial. Instead, the judge allowed his son to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, despite the fact that the son had already pleaded guilty and been sentenced to life without parole in a separate proceeding. And Crumbley also wants to know why his defense attorney didn't object to the judge doing so.
The bulk of his appeal for now, however, centers on the proffer agreements that the prosecution brokered with two school staffers as it built its historic case in 2021 against James and Jennifer Crumbley, who last year became the first parents in America to be held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child.
The prosecution won those convictions with the help of the two school witnesses who had signed the proffer agreements, which prevented anything they said to investigators from being used against them. The defense, however, didn't learn about these agreements until a week after James Crumbley was convicted when the Free Press discovered them and published an investigation.
Jennifer Crumbley was the first to cite the proffer agreements as grounds for a retrial, or to have her conviction set aside, in a motion filed last year. Her husband soon followed suit.
Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews has previously expressed concern over the prosecution's handling of the proffer agreements, stating that there's only one question she has to answer in deciding whether to grant retrials or throw out the convictions: "Do we now lack confidence about the verdict?"
Jennifer and James Crumbley made history last year after separate juries convicted them of involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of four students killed by their son: Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17, and Madisyn Baldwin, 17. Six other students and a teacher also were injured.
The Crumbleys were accused, in separate trials, of buying their son a gun, failing to properly secure it, and never disclosing it to the school during a pivotal meeting with school officials the morning of the shootings. They each are serving 10-15 year prison sentences.
The Crumbleys maintain that they had no idea their son was planning to shoot up his school; that the gun at issue was not his to use freely, and that the gun — given to him as early Christmas gift — was hidden in a dresser, unloaded, with the bullets located in a separate drawer.
The shooter was 15 at the time of the rampage. He, too, is appealing his conviction.
The two school officials at issue are former school counselor Shawn Hopkins and former Dean of Students Nicholas Ejak, who made the controversial decision to let the shooter return to class, despite getting multiple warnings about his behavior in the days and hours before the massacre. They also never searched his backpack — which contained the gun — or asked his parents whether he had access to a gun, or instructed his parents to take him home after finding a cryptic drawing he had made of a gun, a human body bleeding and the words, "The thoughts won't stop. Help me."
"The fact that the men insisted on proffer agreements prior to speaking with the prosecution indicates that neither man had any interest in assisting the prosecution without protection," Alona Sharon, James Crumbley's appellate attorney, has argued in court documents.
"While it is true that Hopkins and Ejak spoke to authorities on the day of the shooting, it is also clear that once the shock of the event wore off, the men shifted to worrying about self-preservation. It was their concern about their own wellbeing that led the men to secure counsel and then demand proffer agreements in exchange for information that they could provide," Sharon writes. "What should be clear to this court is that without the signed proffer agreements, Hopkins and Ejak had no intention of testifying at trial or cooperating with the prosecution."
The prosecution has denied these assertions, maintaining Ejak and Hopkins testified because of subpoenas, not the proffer agreements. Moreover, it contends, the Crumbleys were convicted because of their own actions and inactions — nothing else.
Assistant Oakland County Prosecutor Marc Keast drove this point home at a previous hearing for Jennifer Crumbley, when he lambasted the embattled mother in court.
"She was the cause of these four deaths ... nobody else judge, her," Keast said, referring to the four students who were killed in the shooting.
Keast also defended the prosecution's handling of the trials and the proffer agreements.
"There was no malfeasance by the prosecution," Keast said.
He also reiterated a theme that prosecutors have long hammered at: The Crumbleys, more than anyone else, could have prevented this tragedy because they had information the school officials did not.
"Jennifer Crumbley knew the background. Jennifer Crumbley had the opportunity to take him home. She could have checked the backpack, taken her son home from school," Keast argued at the mother's hearing, noting she did none of those things.
According to trial testimony, neither did the father.
"James Crumbley received a fair trial. As with Jennifer Crumbley, we believe the jury verdict in this case is correct and should be upheld," Jeff Wattrick, spokesperson for the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office, has previously stated.
Ejak and Hopkins were the last two people to meet with the shooter and his parents before the shooting occurred. According to trial testimony, the school counselor had received multiple warnings from teachers about the shooter's behavior in the days before the shooting: He was researching bullets on his cellphone in class and watching a video of someone gunning people down another time. Perhaps most troublesome was the cryptic gun drawing he made on his math worksheet, along with the words, "The thoughts won't stop. Help me."
The parents were summoned to the counselor's office over that drawing, and met with their son, Ejak and Hopkins. The two school officials told the parents that their son appeared to be sad, but that they did not think he was a danger to himself or anyone else. They concluded that the boy would be better off in class with his friends than at home alone.
The parents went back to their jobs. Their son went back to class. Two hours later, he fired his first shot.
The Crumbleys' new lawyers maintain that by concealing the proffer agreements, the prosecution denied the defense the opportunity to question and potentially expose the "bias and motive" of the two school witnesses to testify favorably for the prosecution.
The hearing begins at 9 a.m. Friday.
Contact Tresa Baldas: [e-mail]
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: James Crumbley returns to court to argue for a retrial, or acquittal