Days after the school killings in Oxford, Michigan, McDonald took the unprecedented step of criminally charging parents for a mass shooting committed by their child at a school. Ethan Crumbley is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder of Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17, and injured seven others.
McDonald described the requested sentence as deserved and blasted James Crumbley, 47, and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, 45, in separate sentencing notes, describing them as not only negligent but callous.
The sentencing notes also revealed unusual requests and new information that were referenced to the jury during James Crumbley’s trial.
Shannon Smith, Jennifer Crumbley’s lawyer, asked that his client be sentenced to home detention under electronic monitoring – where she would live in Smith’s guest house. McDonald wrote that such a sentence would be “a slap in the face of the gravity of the tragedy” caused by Crumbley’s actions.
But it was James Crumbley who McDonald described as particularly egregious when she revealed details of the “electronic threats” he made from prison that resulted in him losing most of his communication privileges in prison at midway through his trial in March.
“Defendant’s jail calls showed that he blamed everyone but himself for what happened and repeatedly referred to himself as a ‘martyr,'” McDonald wrote. She revealed that in calls made throughout 2022 and 2023, James Crumbley called McDonald “that stupid fucking whore” while addressing McDonald by name and saying he hoped she listened.
“There will be retaliation, believe me,” James Crumbley said in a December 2023 prison message. In a phone call a month later, he said he was “unchained” and that McDonald “would do It’s better to be afraid.”
“His jail calls show a complete lack of remorse, he blames everyone but himself, and he has threatened the elected prosecutor,” McDonald wrote.
The Crumbleys’ lawyers sought to paint a different picture of their clients and said prosecutors relied on public outrage over the shooting.
Jennifer Crumbley was “damned no matter what she did or didn’t do,” Smith wrote. She noted that during her client’s trial, prosecutors objected to Crumbley becoming emotional as a silent video of the shooting was played in court, but in arguments they portrayed her as a mother cold and indifferent.
The two defendants have been in prison for 27 months and spend almost an hour a day in their cells, their lawyers said.
washingtonpost
