Justice and public relations shouldn't mix

Nolan Finley, Tribune News Service

A defendant standing before a judge and jury with her life in the balance should have confidence that the only motivation in the courtroom is the pursuit of justice. The person on trial should be certain conviction or exoneration will be decided solely by the facts presented, and not by a public relations campaign aimed at swaying public opinion or burnishing the image of the prosecutor. Jennifer Crumbley, mother of the Oxford High School shooter, contends she didn’t have such confidence when she was placed on trial in Oakland County Circuit Court for enabling the carnage her son committed, according to a new filing asking that her conviction be set aside. Defense Attorney Michael Dezsi alleges Prosecutor Karen McDonald, immediately after Crumbley was charged, launched a public relations campaign aimed at damaging his client and controlling the narrative of the unprecedented case against the parents of the shooter.

McDonald hired a public relations firm within hours of Crumbley’s arrest, according to the agency’s website, and then replaced it with a second firm later in the proceedings, for a total cost of roughly $135,000 over two and a half years. “This is very unorthodox,” Dezsi said in an interview. “It’s not typical for a prosecutor’s office to hire outside PR firms to manage messaging unless they’re trying to get people to accept their version of the facts.” McDonald was in groundbreaking territory in charging Jennifer and James Crumbley. Parents of a school shooter had never faced involuntary manslaughter charges before. The decision to bring them to trial became a huge national story and the office was flooded with calls requesting interviews.

“We were bombarded and none of us are experts at dealing with that,” says Assistant Prosecutor David Williams, who notes the office just hired its first public information officer. The PR firms, Williams says, “were not hired to say anything about the Crumbleys. They were hired to help us field the media.” Dezsi sees it differently. He is accusing McDonald of trying the Crumbleys in the court of public opinion and building support for a shaky legal concept that parents are culpable when they fail to anticipate and intervene in their children’s crimes. Williams says the goal was transparency, helping the public understand why the prosecutor’s office felt charging the parents was an appropriate step.

“You’re going to be questioned about this decision and people are going to accuse you of being political,” he says. “You’ve just got to tell people what you did and why.” The publicity generated by the firms also helped elevate McDonald’s profile. McDonald and all others involved in the case were under a judicial gag order throughout the trial forbidding them from discussing the details. Yet ABC News and the Washington Post were granted exclusive access to her and her staff as she prepared the case for trial. And although the stories were not printed or broadcast until after the guilty verdict was handed down, Dezsi contends allowing reporters to embed with the prosecutorial team violated the spirit of the gag order.

That’s one of the points he’ll argue at the hearing on his motion on Jan. 31. “She was doing indirectly what she couldn’t do directly because of the gag order,” Dezsi says. The ABC and Post reports were highly flattering of McDonald, casting her as a determined hero willing to risk her reputation and career on a long-shot prosecution that promised, if successful, to be a giant leap toward ending youth gun violence. Noting McDonald was advised by doubters to focus on prosecuting the son and let the parents be, the Post wrote: “But McDonald couldn’t let herself do the easy thing. She almost never did.”

Not a bad line on which to build a future political campaign. McDonald has been mentioned as a potential attorney general candidate in 2026, and perhaps other offices. Williams acknowledges the office was “100% aware” it would face accusations of serving McDonald’s personal ambitions by working with the two outlets. “You have to make a decision,” he says. “Are you going to be controlled by what people will say later about your decision? Nobody knew if they would be convicted or not. You don’t know how you’re going to come out.

“We thought it was really important and historic, and that the public should know more about it. It might come out looking really great for Karen McDonald. It might be terrible. You’re going to find out.”

Dezsi is less interested in McDonald’s future than he is that of his client, who he feels is being sacrificed for an agenda that has little to with justice: “I believe the prosecutor engaged in a high-priced smear campaign to rile up public support because the case is so weak in the law.”