The first person convicted in the novel prosecution to hold parents accountable for their child carrying out a school shooting wants to be released from prison.

A lawyer for the mother of the teenager convicted of killing four students in a Michigan high school in 2021, Jennifer Crumbley, is asking the Oakland County Circuit Court for their client to be released from prison while her appeal of her conviction plays out. 

Crumbley and her husband, James Crumbley, were convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to ten to 15 years in prison. The charges were filed against the couple after their then-15-year-old son, Ethan Crumbley, brought a gun into  Oxford High School in Michigan in 2021 and killed four students while injuring seven others. 

Prosecutors did not allege the Crumbleys knew their son was planning to carry out the shooting. However, they said the parents disregarded warnings from their son and bought him a gun as an early Christmas present. 

Jennifer Crumbley appealed her conviction earlier this month, citing the novel theory behind the case. While the process plays out, her lawyer, Michael Dezsi, says she should be released from prison because she “has committed no crime, has never harmed anyone, and is certainly not a flight risk.” He also said it would be “grossly unfair and unjust” to keep her in prison for the duration of her appeal.

“Given the overtly tenuous nature of these charges, the prosecution should not reap the reward of a lengthy unlawful incarceration before the Michigan Supreme Court can hear and decide this case,” Mr. Dezsi said. 

Mr. Dezsi criticized the decision to prosecute his client in the first place and said it is “overreaching” and “attempts to pin the failings of a nation on the back of a parent.” 

“Having Mrs. Crumbley locked up at the Michigan Department of Corrections’ Women’s Huron Valley facility not only casts a dark shadow over the justice system but rewards the prosecution of a fabricated crime, setting a very dangerous precedent,” he said in a press release. 

The Oakland County prosecutor’s office responded to Crumbley’s request in a statement, saying, “Jennifer Crumbley was tried by a jury of her peers for her own actions and inactions leading to the shooting at Oxford High School — not for the actions of her son.”

“A jury of 12 individuals listened to testimony and reviewed countless pieces of evidence before they unanimously found her guilty as charged, and she was sentenced by the judge accordingly. This was an egregious set of facts that resulted in a conviction along with a 10-15-year prison sentence,” the statement added. “The legal issues raised by Jennifer Crumbley have already been heard and rejected by the Michigan Court of Appeals.”

In 2023, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected a bid to end the Crumbleys’ prosecution.