James Crumbley refuses to testify in his Michigan school shooting trial

Testimony ended Wednesday morning in the trial of James Crumbley, whose son carried out Michigan’s deadliest school shooting more than two years ago, and whose wife was convicted in the same courtroom last month of failing to prevent the disaster.

Prosecutors took the rare step of holding the Crumbleys partially responsible for the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School, in which their son Ethan, who was 15 at the time, killed four people and injured seven others.

“That nightmare was preventable and foreseeable,” Oakland County District Attorney Marc Keast said in an opening statement last week. He accused Mr Crumbley of failing to secure the gun his son used in the shooting.

Mr. Crumbley has been in jail since December 2021, when he and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, were each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. They requested separate trials, and unlike his wife, Mr. Crumbley chose not to testify in his own defense.

The witness lists in the two trials were similar, but there were a few key differences in the evidence presented.

During Ms. Crumbley’s trial, lawyers delved into her communications with her son, including months of text messages, as prosecutors tried to portray her as a distant and neglectful mother.

But in Mr. Crumbley’s case, the testimony focused less on his parenting and more on the Sig Sauer pistol he bought for his son as an early Christmas present four days before the shooting.

Law enforcement officers who searched the Crumbleys’ home shortly after the crash testified this week that they found the gun storage case open on the parents’ bed, along with an empty box of ammunition. They said there was no indication the case had been closed.

Officials walked the jury through several entries in the shooter’s diary, including one that appeared to have been written the day before the shooting. “I have access to the weapon and ammunition,” the entry said. “I am now fully committed to this.”

It was not clear whether either of the shooter’s parents had seen the journal entries before the shooting.

Prosecutors called 15 witnesses in Mr. Crumbley’s trial, including people who saw the shooting and law enforcement officers who investigated it. The defense called only one witness: Karen Crumbley, the defendant’s sister. She said she had never seen a reason to be overly concerned about her cousin until the shooting.

Mariell Lehman, Mr. Crumbley’s lawyer, said in her opening statements last week that her client did not know his son had access to the gun, and that he had no reason to believe his son would act violently.

“James Crumbley didn’t know what his son was going to do,” she said. “He did not know that his son could possibly harm other people. He didn’t know what his son was planning to do.”

The jury will hear closing arguments on Wednesday afternoon.