James Crumbley Trial: Father of Oxford High School shooter found guilty

PONTIAC, Mich. (FOX 2) - The jury in the trial of James Crumbley, the father of the Oxford High School shooter, has found him guilty on all four charges.

A 12-member jury informed the Oakland County Circuit Court that they had reached a decision regarding Crumbley's guilt after a day of deliberations. Their decision will be the second of its kind after a separate jury trial last month found Jennifer Crumbley guilty on four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

James is also charged with the same four crimes. The high-profile trial followed years of evidence gathering, motion hearings, and anticipation after county prosecutor Karen McDonald chose to go forward with bringing charges against the Crumbley parents just days after the mass shooting.

James Crumbley trial verdict: Father found guilty of manslaughter after son kills 4 students

James Crumbley was found guilty on Thursday of manslaughter after his son, Ethan Crumbley, shot and killed four students at Oxford High School in 2021.

McDonald and her assistant prosecutor Marc Keast argued over five days of witness testimony that James was partly responsible for the deaths of Madisyn Baldwin, Hana St. Juliana, Tate Myre, and Justin Shilling.

They called more than a dozen witnesses, played security video from a gun store and inside the high school, showed revealing text messages and explosive journal entries written just days before the Crumbley parent's teenage son carried out a rampage on Nov. 30, 2021.

During her rebuttal, McDonald physically locked the murder weapon with a cable lock, showing the jury that "ten seconds of the easiest, simplest thing" could have prevented the deaths of four teenagers.

But Mariell Lehman, the defense attorney for James Crumbley, argued there were any number of gaps in what the defendant knew about what his son was planning that he couldn't be found guilty.

"You would have seen evidence if James was guilty," she told the jury during her closing argument. "If James knew about what was in the journal, the prosecution would have told you that. If James knew his son had gained access to firearms, the prosecution would have told you that.

"The fact that you have not seen that evidence is your reasonable doubt," she added.

At the heart of the case is whether James Crumbley was negligent as a parent when he purchased a gun for his son - a gun that would be used days later to commit mass murder.

Charging the parents of a mass shooter for crimes tied to the shooting is no longer unprecedented after Jennifer Crumbley's case ended in early February. Whether both parents could be found guilty for the same crimes, with similar evidence, but a different jury remains to be seen.