By Kara Berg, MediaNews Group

The mother of Oxford High School shooting victim Madisyn Baldwin said on Friday that she doesn’t see the $500,000 she accepted from the school district as a settlement — she sees it as an ultimatum from them.

Nicole Beausoleil, who sued Oxford Community Schools along with three other families for its role in a 2021 mass shooting, said she took the money from the district not because she was giving up on enacting change within Oxford schools, but because she had to think of Madisyn’s father and her three younger siblings.

“I felt (the $500,000) was the only measure I’d get from the tragedy to help them do everything they deserve to do,” Beausoleil said. “It was very hard for me to do. I really didn’t want to take it. I didn’t want it to show like I gave up, which I didn’t give up. I knew it was a take it or leave it type of deal. I felt in my heart I couldn’t make the decision only for myself.”

Beausoleil’s 17-year-old daughter Madisyn was one of four kids killed at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. Justin Shilling, 17, Tate Myre, 16, and Hana St. Juliana, 14, were also killed.

Beausoleil and Justin’s family were the only two to take the settlements. The Myres and the St. Julianas rejected it. The settlements were connected to federal lawsuits the families filed, alleging the district failed to protect students and downplayed the threat the killer posed to the school.

“I just want the change. I want people to see the bigger picture here, not look at this as two families gave up and took the settlement,” Beausoleil said. “It’s not a settlement, it’s an ultimatum. Take it or leave it, you have this many hours to decide. There wasn’t anything about it that was sincere or remorseful.”

The shooter, Ethan Crumbley, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December 2023, though he is appealing both the sentence and his guilty plea to the Michigan Supreme Court.

The panel of three judges from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded former counselor Shawn Hopkins and former dean of students Nick Ejak did not display a callous indifference toward the risk they perceived the shooter posed prior to the Nov. 30, 2021 attack and that Oxford schools had immunity and could not be sued. The wrongful death lawsuit was dismissed May 20.

Oxford Schools attorney Tim Mullins said the offer to the families before the 6th Circuit decision was $1 million, and it was lowered to $500,000 after that.

“We always try to reach a reasonable resolution of a disputed claim,” Mullins said. “We are pleased to have been able to do so at this point.”

Beausoleil said the district has only seen her daughter as a liability.

“I want her to be seen in a different light,” Beausoleil said. “I want this kind of just to be behind me and to keep moving forward to continue to create change. We’re going to constantly fight, there’s no stopping it.”

While she’s lost a lot of hope in the past four years, she said she plans to keep fighting for her children. She filed the lawsuit so she could see change in the district, so no one would have to feel the pain she and the other families felt.

“Our lawsuits were to create change, it wasn’t to create this sue happy, ‘oh need a bunch of money’ idea,” Beausoleil said. “We want systematic change. We want this change because there was neglect on all aspects.”

Madisyn’s younger sister Payton is starting her freshman year this fall, Beausoleil said. She’s going to Anchor Bay schools, and Beausoleil said she has gone through safety directives with the district. It’s heartening to see they’ve taken her suggestions to improve student safety, she said.

But still, the thought of Payton going to high school has taken a toll on Beausoleil, she said. The money will help to make sure Payton can go to college at an Ivy League if she wants to and to help her autistic brother.

Madisyn would’ve wanted that, Beausoleil said. She had planned to go into neuroscience to learn about autism and how the brain functioned.

“It’s not a lot of money, I’m not expecting the kids to live off of this,” Beausoleil said. “But it’s a start in the right direction of where it should’ve started in November 2021.”

By Aya Fayad, MediaNews Group

The convicted mother of the Oxford High School shooter who killed four of his classmates on Friday asked the Michigan Court of Appeals to throw out her involuntary manslaughter convictions for what she described as a “sham prosecution” by a “cheating” prosecutor.

In the historic February 2024 decision, Crumbley was convicted in a jury trial on four counts of involuntary manslaughter arising from the criminal acts of her son, Ethan, who shot and killed four students at Oxford High School in November 2021. Ethan’s father, James Crumbley, was also convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter in a separate jury trial in March 2024. Both were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors said both parents were grossly negligent by storing a gun and ammunition where their son could access it, and that they missed repeated opportunities to stop the tragedy. The decision marked the first time in the United States that a parent was convicted of manslaughter for a mass shooting carried out by their child.

“Opportunity knocked over and over again and was ignored,” Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews said last year at the trial. “No one answered.”

However, both Crumbley and her husband have long argued that they did not know of their son’s plans for a mass shooting at his school and never noticed any signs of his deteriorating mental state. Her attorney further argued to the Court of Appeals that the trial was “riddled with errors.”

“This entire prosecution of Mrs. Crumbley was a sham that should never have been allowed to proceed to trial,” appellate attorney Michael R. Dezsi said in a statement. “The case against Mrs. Crumbley has been off the rails from the beginning … not to mention all the cheating by the Oakland County Prosecutor.”

The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond Saturday to requests for comment. But Prosecutor Karen McDonald in the past has called Dezsi’s claims “meritless” and said the only motivation for his requests claiming that she had secret agreements with two star witnesses was to generate headlines and divert attention away from Crumbley’s actions.

Crumbley’s appeal contended that she cannot be held criminally responsible for involuntary manslaughter because she “owed no legal duty to the victims of her son’s criminal acts” and was “under no legal duty to control and prevent her son from committing intentional, criminal acts.” The document argued that Crumbley’s convictions are inconsistent with Michigan law because of the absence of a “special relationship” with the shooting victims, and therefore no legal duty to protect another from the criminal acts of a “third party.”

The appeal also said past precedent about a parent’s duty to “control their minor child” has been applied only in situations when a child is unable to comprehend the risks or dangers of their actions, not in circumstances involving a teenager intentionally committing violent acts. Dezsi noted Michigan passed a safe-storage gun law after the shooting, meaning there “was simply no law in place from which to impose a legal duty on Mrs. Crumbley to prevent her son from accessing the firearm to commit intentional, criminal acts.”

Prosecutors have countered that there was a foreseeable risk in Ethan Crumbley’s actions and that Jennifer Crumbley failed to put a stop to them. During the trial, they argued that the parent ignored signs that her 15-year-old son was in crisis, failed to get him mental health treatment and bought him a 9mm gun anyway, while failing to put a lock on the gun.

Responsibility of Oxford officials

Dezsi also argued that it was Oxford High School officials, not Jennifer Crumbley, who had a legal duty to prevent her son’s acts because her son was under his school’s control and supervision. Consequently, officials such as former counselor Shawn Hopkins and former dean of students Nick Ejak had a legal duty to protect students Hana St. Juliana, Justin Shilling, Tate Myre and Madisyn Baldwin, who were killed in the shooting, based on the officials’ “special relationship” to them.

In March, a three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded Hopkins and Ejak did not display callous indifference toward the risk they perceived Ethan Crumbley posed prior to the Nov. 30, 2021, attack. The wrongful death lawsuit was dismissed on May 20.

However, on Thursday, the families of Baldwin and Shilling confirmed they settled with the Oxford school district, Hopkins and Ejak for $500,000 each, despite an appeals court ruling that the district was protected by qualified immunity. The families of Myre and St. Juliana rejected the offers.

Nicole Beausoleil, Baldwin’s mother, said Friday that she took the settlement money not because she was giving up on making change within the school district, but because she had to think of her husband and three kids.

Errors in the trial

Dezsi also argued that multiple errors were made throughout the trial, and that the prosecution used improper evidence, and Judge Matthews allowed them to “cheat their way to a conviction.”

“We have discovered documents proving that the prosecutor engaged in an orchestrated smear campaign, paid for with taxpayers’ money, and made secret deals with witnesses to testify for the prosecution,” Dezsi said. “Yet despite all of the evidence surrounding the prosecutor’s misconduct, cheating, and mishandling of the case, Oakland County Circuit Judge Cheryl Matthews turned a blind eye to all of it.”

The allegations include that the prosecution was inconsistent, charging Ethan Crumbley as an adult but prosecuting his mother for not controlling her minor child. Dezsi also argued that the prosecution intentionally didn’t share its proffer agreements with Hopkins and Ejak, which shielded the two school officials from criminal blame instead of Jennifer Crumbley. And he contended the Oakland County jury was prejudiced against the mother.

Another argument is that the prosecution gave two definitions of involuntary manslaughter, but Matthews failed to instruct the jury members that they were required to agree on one of the two theories — gross negligence due to the inadequate storage of the gun or her legal duty to “control her minor child.”

Jennifer Crumbley is also contesting the introduction in court of the journal entries and text messages written by Ethan Crumbley, arguing they are “hearsay without an exception, more prejudicial than probative, and violated the United States and Michigan constitutions” because Ethan and his friend, the recipient, were never required to take the stand and testify.

The journal, seized from the student’s backpack that was found in the school bathroom, contained detailed plans to commit a mass murder at the school, entries about past events, statements about his parents and criticisms of school officials.

Texts Ethan Crumbley sent to his friend included messages revealing his desire to become a school shooter, some reading things like, “I have ZERO help for my mental problems and it’s causing me to SHOOT UP THE F—– SCHOOL.” and “My parents won’t listen to me about help or a therapist.”

“Not only did Judge Matthews allow the prosecution to cheat their way to a conviction, but she allowed the jury to hear improper evidence that favored the prosecution’s case while excluding other evidence that would have countered it,” the filing said.

Dezsi repeated Crumbley’s arguments that McDonald’s office had retained high-priced public relations firms costing Oakland County taxpayers nearly $300,000 to run a behind-the-scenes smear campaign against Jennifer Crumbley.

In June, Matthews found that McDonald the suppressed evidence, but it wasn’t a serious enough violation to deny Jennifer Crumbley from receiving “a trial and verdict worthy of confidence based on the cumulative effect of the significant evidence against her.” After the ruling, McDonald said it was “time to turn the attention away from the Crumbleys and refocus on the victims.”

Dezsi disagreed in the filing.

“There will be at least 10 more judges on higher courts who will review this case, and I’m confident that at some point in this process, Mrs. Crumbley’s convictions will be thrown out,” he added.

By Kara Berg, The Detroit News

The families of slain Oxford High School students Madisyn Baldwin and Justin Shilling have settled with the Oxford Community School District, former counselor Shawn Hopkins and former dean of students Nick Ejak for $500,000, despite an appeals court ruling that the district was protected by qualified immunity.

The district offered the $500,000 settlement to each of the four families whose children were killed in the November 2021 mass shooting at Oxford High School, said Madisyn’s family’s attorney Wolfgang Mueller. Baldwin, 17; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Shilling, 17; and Tate Myre, 16, were killed by a 15-year-old student at the school.

The panel of three judges from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously concluded Hopkins and Ejak did not display callous indifference toward the risk they perceived the shooter posed prior to the Nov. 30, 2021, attack and that Oxford schools had immunity and could not be sued. The wrongful death lawsuit was dismissed May 20.

“You had to look at the writing on the wall,” Mueller said. “Just knowing the way the panel had addressed the lawyers’ oral arguments in the Sixth Circuit, I knew it was going to happen. … It’s clearly not anywhere near adequate to make up for the harm, but the reality was, the cases were going to be dismissed.”

Oxford Schools attorney Tim Mullins said the offer to the families before the 6th Circuit decision was $1 million, and it was lowered to $500,000 after that.

“We always try to reach a reasonable resolution of a disputed claim,” Mullins said. “We are pleased to have been able to do so at this point.”

Mullins said Tate and Hana’s families rejected both offers and the ball is now in their court. Their lawsuits have been dismissed, but he said he’ll “never say never” to the possibility of an out-of-court settlement.

Madisyn’s family filed a motion Thursday to approve the settlement and allow the distribution of the money. A similar motion has not yet been approved in Justin’s family’s case.

Attorney Chris Desmond, who along with Ven Johnson represents the families of Tate and Justin in their lawsuit against the district, said Tate’s family declined the settlement but Justin’s family accepted it.

Steve St. Juliana, the father of victim Hana St. Juliana, told the Oxford Community Schools Board of Education to “shove” their $500,000 offer during a June board meeting. He said he was given less than 20 hours to consider the offer.

“That’s how little that you value our children,” St. Juliana told board members. “I don’t even know what to say. I mean, how can you not be embarrassed and ashamed? Not only of the offer, which is insulting, at the very least, but the manner in which it’s delivered.

“Well, I’ll deliver my answer right here. I am not going to stop striving for the changes necessary to save our kids,” he added. “So you can shove your offer.”

Lawsuits filed by victims and their families have alleged that the district failed to protect students and downplayed the threat the killer posed to the school. The shooter, Ethan Crumbley, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in December 2023, though he is appealing both the sentence and his guilty plea to the Michigan Supreme Court.

His parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were both convicted of four counts each of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the four students their son killed. Both were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison and are appealing their convictions.

The families of seven students who filed the civil cases reached the effective end of their appeal attempts in May after the Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear arguments in the case against Oxford Community Schools. A federal judge ruled in May that those cases also cannot proceed.

Michigan’s Court of Appeals ruled last month that Steve St. Juliana can sue Michigan State Police over his allegations that they should have done more to intervene and prevent the shooting.

Mueller said “everyone is disappointed in the amount” offered in the settlement.

“They’re more disappointed that the school district has never, ever accepted any responsibility for this,” Mueller said. “They’ve hidden behind qualified immunity, which is what got the case dismissed. They’re not happy in any respect.”