OXFORD, Mich. (CN) — Testimony in Jennifer Crumbley's manslaughter trial ended about an hour and a half early Monday as attorneys prepared to spend the afternoon reviewing evidence Crumbley's defense objected to.
Crumbley faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter related to each of the four Michigan high school students her son Ethan Crumbley fatally shot in November 2021. She and her husband James, who faces his own manslaughter trial in March, are the first parents of a school shooter to face criminal charges over their child's actions.
Judge Cheryl Matthews dismissed the jury shortly after 3:30 p.m., believing the debate would likely take the rest of the afternoon. The development came on the heels of a heated exchange between state prosecutors and Crumbley's attorney Shannon Smith, in which she argued a police witness' testimony was prejudicial.
Smith specifically objected to a remark from Joe Brian, a detective sergeant with the Oakland County Sheriff's Office. Brian interviewed Jennifer and James Crumbley on the day of the shooting after their then-15-year-old son had already been taken into custody. The detective, prompted by state prosecutor Marc Keast, called Jennifer Crumbley's demeanor throughout the interview "atypical."
In the video of Brian's interview with the Crumbleys, Jennifer can be seen scrolling on her phone as police speak with the couple.
Smith said she believed the comment was inappropriate, arguing it was unfair to judge the mother for her response to an emotional situation.
"Every person in life reacts differently, this is very grossly unfair and prejudicial," Smith argued to Matthews.
Keast and Brian only doubled down in response, with the detective adding that over his nearly three decades in law enforcement, there have been multiple times he's had to tell parents that their children had committed a crime. He said parents crying or express disbelief were more common responses to such news.
"I've had many cases where kids have done bad things and I've had to tell the parents," Brian said.
But Smith noted Brian had never faced parents whose children committed a school shooting.
"This is such a different case... He said in his experience he hasn't talked to anyone else with a school shooting," Smith argued.
During cross-examination, Smith also pointed out that during the interview Jennifer Crumbley was using her phone to show Brian a picture of violent drawings her son had made on his school sheets.
"She showed me the picture, yes ma'am," Brian said, stepping down from the bench shortly thereafter.
Brian was the prosecution's last witness on Monday before Matthews dismissed jurors and the attorneys began debating the disputed evidence. As during last week, Keast and his fellow prosecutor Karen McDonald used witnesses' testimony to paint Jennifer Crumbley as self-absorbed — or at least more concerned with her horse than with her son. Before Brian took the stand jurors also heard from Kira Pennock, the 27-year-old owner of the horse farm where the Crumbleys boarded their horses Billy and Shorty, and from Shawn Hopkins, the shooter's counselor at Oxford High School.
Pennock told jurors of how Jennifer Crumbley had vented to her at the farm about her son being "weird" and an "oopsie-baby." Unlike other parents who liked to talk about their kids, Pennock opined, the Crumbley mother seemed reluctant to mention hers.
“There was nothing truly positive when she was talking about him," Pennock said.
Hopkins added that he believed Ethan Crumbley was expressing suicidal ideation on the day of the shooting, when he saw the image of a gun and bullet-riddled body that the boy had recently drawn on a math worksheet. He told Keast that the meeting he had with the Crumbley parents that day, after calling them to the school, lasted less than 15 minutes. He added Jennifer Crumbley seemed "distant" during the meeting.
"It felt like it was a little bit of an inconvenience to be there," Hopkins said.
He added that he wanted the boy to get mental health treatment as soon as possible, and was "caught off-guard" when the Crumbley parents decided to keep their son in school for the day.
But on cross-examination, he also acknowledged he didn't see a reason to bar the shooter from school, as the parents wouldn't take him and he didn't want the teen alone while expressing suicidal thoughts. The point Smith seemed to be making was that even a trained professional like Hopkins — and thus much less Jennifer Crumbley — didn't believe Ethan Crumbley was about to shoot four classmates.
"If I believed that he was a threat to people I would have taken different actions," Hopkins said.
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