Jury selection for Jennifer Crumbley trial underway Tuesday

Jury selection is underway in the first of two trials for the parents of Ethan Crumbley, who killed classmates at Michigan’s Oxford High School. 

James and Jennifer Crumbley are both facing involuntary manslaughter charges for each of the slain victims in the shooting. The case could set a precedent for holding parents criminally responsible for the actions of a child. 

Prosecutors accuse the Crumbleys of ignoring signs their son was troubled and could become violent, and instead buying him the hand gun he used to kill four students and wound seven other people at Oxford High in 2021.

The prosecution alleges the parents could have stopped the massacre before it began, but never mentioned to school officials the teen might have access to a gun. 

Defense attorneys counter it was the son who pulled the trigger, not the parents, and that they had no idea he wanted help or that he was planning a mass shooting. 

The couple requested to have separate trials in November after new evidence surfaced that their attorneys said could pit them against each other. Their son was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Dec. 8, following hours of heart-wrenching statements by survivors and families of the victims.

On Monday — a day before the trials were set to begin — new attorneys for Ethan Crumbley sent a letter to the judge overseeing his parents’ case that detailed his intentions to appeal his sentence and fight any efforts to get him to testify against his parents, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Jury selection for Jennifer Crumbley’s trial remains underway.

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