(WWJ) — Jury selection is set to get underway Tuesday for the trial of James Crumbley, the father of the convicted Oxford High School shooter.
Like his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, he faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter. She was found guilty on all four counts last month and is set to be sentenced in April, facing the possibility of 15 years in prison.
The parents are the first in U.S. history to be criminally charged in connection with a school shooting carried out by their child. On a new Daily J podcast WWJ’s Zach Clark and Legal Analyst Charlie Langton examine whether James Crumbley will see the same fate as his wife.
“Facts are the same, charges are the same; there’s a lot of similarities that will be in this James Crumbley trial as we’ve already seen in the Jennifer Crumbley trial,” Langton said. “In fact, originally when they decided to separate the trials, I was a little surprised.”
While the two trials have a lot of similarities, not everything is the same — the parents are different people who played different roles in the life of their child.
Langton says we’ll also see a different witness that plays a key role: the original owner of the gun that was used by Ethan Crumbley on Nov. 30, 2021 to kill four classmates and wound six other students and a teacher.
“The original owner of the gun apparently had this 9mm and then that person sold it to the gun store, and then the gun store sold it to James Crumbley,” Langton said. “The significance of that is that the prosecutor will get the evidence out that the original owner sold it to the gun store with a trigger lock.”
“When the sheriff’s (office) found the murder weapon, there was a trigger lock that wasn’t even open, so therefore it’s reckless to have an unsecured gun in your home,” he said.
Langton says “I think the big difference in this case is probably gonna be the defense lawyer,” noting attorney Mariell Lehman is “a very different lawyer” than Jennifer Crumbley’s attorney, Shannon Smith.
“She also works a lot better, in my view, with the prosecutor. There’s not that animosity — big, important factor,” Langton said.
The trial, the final criminal hurdle — at the moment at least, pending possible appeals — in the Oxford High School shooting comes more than two years after the Crumbleys’ son killed Madisyn Baldwin, Justin Shilling, Tate Myre and Hana St. Juliana.
In late 2022 he pleaded guilty to numerous felonies, including terrorism and murder. Last December he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. That sentence is expected to be appealed.
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Editor's note: Previous versions of this story stated that the parents could serve 15 years in prison for each count, which is typically the case with sentencing. In this instance, however, legal experts tell us James and Jennifer Crumbley could be sentenced to a maximin of 15 years each, as this is considered a single crime.