By JACEY FORTIN NYTimes News Service
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In closing arguments at the trial against Jennifer Crumbley on Friday, lawyers for the prosecution and defense differed sharply over whether jurors should take the extraordinary step of holding a mother responsible for her child’s horrific crimes.

But both sides agreed on one point: This has been a singular trial.

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Prosecutors are seeking to hold Crumbley partially responsible for the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan. Her son, Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 at the time, killed four classmates at the school and injured seven others, in the deadliest school shooting in the state.

“It’s a rare case,” said Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald, who accused Jennifer Crumbley of negligence but acknowledged the high burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that she had committed a crime.

“It takes the unthinkable,” McDonald added. “And she has done the unthinkable, and because of that, four kids have died.”

Since last week, the jurors have heard wrenching statements from witnesses, combative debates between lawyers, and hours of testimony from Crumbley, 45. The charges against her and her husband, who each face four counts of involuntary manslaughter, are at the leading edge of a push by some prosecutors to hold parents accountable when they are suspected of enabling deadly violence by their children.

The husband, James Crumbley, 47, will be tried separately in March.

Jennifer Crumbley’s lawyer, Shannon Smith, said that her client should not be punished for the bloodshed that her son set in motion, in part because Jennifer Crumbley could not have foreseen what would happen. Smith also argued, using examples from her own life, that parenting could be a messy and unpredictable job.

“This case is a very dangerous one for parents out there,” she told the jurors Friday. “It just is. And it is one of the first of its kind.”

Since Crumbley’s trial began last week, prosecutors in Oakland County have called 21 witnesses, including law enforcement officials, the defendant’s friends and those who saw the shooting, to testify about the day of the rampage and the events leading up to it.

Smith participated in cross-examinations but called only one defense witness, Jennifer Crumbley, who testified Thursday that she had always tried to protect her son but did not expect him to hurt other people.

“I wish he would have killed us instead,” she Crumbley said.

Throughout the trial, the defense tried to depict Crumbley as a “hypervigilant mother” who was anxious about her teenager’s whereabouts and attentive to the everyday details of his life, like bothersome braces, geometry grades and bowling practice.

“I am asking that you find Jennifer Crumbley not guilty,” Smith said Friday. “Not just for Jennifer Crumbley, but for every mother who’s out there doing the best they can, who could easily be in her shoes.”

But prosecutors have suggested that Crumbley paid more attention to her two horses, and her extramarital affair, than to her son’s needs, and that she ultimately missed glaring warning signs that he was on the verge of committing unspeakable violence.

This week, lawyers also sparred over who was to blame for the fact that Ethan Crumbley had not been sent home from school before the shooting, despite a violent drawing he made. The drawing included a gun and the phrase “blood everywhere,” prompting school officials to meet with his parents just hours before the attack.

“He drew her a picture,” McDonald said Friday. “Pretty egregious and unique circumstances.”

Also introduced as evidence during the trial was months of communications between Crumbley and her son, including text messages from months before the shooting in which Ethan Crumbley had told his mother that their home was haunted, possibly by a demon.

Jennifer Crumbley did not always respond.

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