Oakland County prosecutors are seeking sanctions against Jennifer Crumbley’s appellate attorney after he filed what they called a “meritless” and “improper” motion Wednesday to disqualify prosecutors from Crumbley’s case.

Crumbley, the mother of Oxford High School shooter Ethan Crumbley, filed a motion Wednesday asking Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews to remove and disqualify the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office from her case because Prosecutor Karen McDonald allegedly “cannot be trusted.”

Assistant Prosecutor Marc Keast filed a response to the motion Thursday, noting the only motivation for the request is to generate headlines and divert attention away from Crumbley’s actions. Keast noted that everything mentioned in the motion has already been brought up or rejected as irrelevant by the court.

“That is not a proper purpose under the Court Rules, and defense counsel should be sanctioned,” Keast wrote.

The only reasons a defendant can file motions in the trial court after a conviction are if they’re requesting a new trial, judgement of acquittal, a chance to withdraw their plea or a chance to correct an invalid sentence.

Dezsi has accused McDonald and her team of violating court rules by entering into “secret” agreements with two star prosecution witnesses and hiring two public relations firms to run a “smear campaign against the Crumbleys in an effort to sway public opinion and taint the jury pool.”

McDonald said Wednesday afternoon the suggestion that Crumbley was convicted based on a strategic media campaign is “preposterous.” She said there is “zero legal basis” for Dezsi to ask Matthews to remove her office as prosecutors.

The prosecutor’s office did not have a communications team and was inundated with media requests after the November 2021 shooting, Keast wrote, and McDonald asked the county executive and Board of Commissioners to retain a crisis communications team to handle the inquiries. In addition, Keast wrote, the media coverage Dezsi is concerned about came before the gag order was put in place in June 2022.

Dezsi never pointed to any specific media coverage in his allegations about prosecutors conducting a smear campaign on the Crumbleys, “because there was no smear campaign, and because the negative portrayals of Jennifer Crumbley were the result of the facts.”

“(The constant) media attention was generated by the tragedy and the defendant’s own actions, not the prosecution, and the suggestion that the media coverage was the product of a smear campaign by hired operatives is ludicrous,” Keast wrote.

But Dezsi alleged that the swarm of pretrial publicity after the shooting “created an unequal playing field.”

“I’m alleging that they tainted the jury pool, and I’m also alleging that they added additional pressure to the to the trial itself and to the jurors deliberations, by ramping up the smear campaign in the months of the trial,” Dezsi said.

He also took issue that prosecutors did not give Crumbley’s defense team copies of so-called proffer agreements made with Oxford High School counselor Shawn Hopkins and former Dean of Students Nick Ejak. Both Hopkins and Ejak met with shooter Ethan Crumbley and his parents the morning of the November 2021 shooting. The proffer agreements said prosecutors cannot use any statements made during an initial meeting to prove their guilt.

Dezsi said the agreements the two employees had with prosecutors were necessary to disclose because their testimony during the Crumbley parents’ trials included their “subjective impressions” of their meeting, so the jury should also have known they had an incentive to testify for the prosecution.

Prosecutors have maintained they didn’t violate court rules by not giving Crumbley’s attorney the proffer agreements. The agreements were not made in exchange for testimony in the case, and they did not grant immunity to Hopkins and Ejak, Keast wrote.

Crumbley has filed multiple motions since her conviction last year, asking for a dismissal of her case or a new trial, to be released from prison while her appeals are pending and now for the prosecutor’s office to be removed from the case.

Matthews denied most of Crumbley’s motion for a new trial or dismissal of her case, but has not ruled on the other motions yet. The only matter she is mulling in the motion for a new trial or dismissal is the issue of the proffer agreements, which she said was a discovery violation she found to be “very very concerning.”

A jury convicted Crumbley of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in February 2024, marking the first time in the U.S. a parent was convicted of manslaughter for a mass shooting carried out by his or her child. Matthews sentenced her to 10-15 years in prison.

A separate jury also convicted her husband, James, who received the same prison sentence. James Crumbley has also filed a motion for a new trial.

Four students were killed in November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School: Hana St. Juliana, 14; Justin Shilling, 17; Tate Myre, 16; and Madisyn Baldwin, 16.

Prosecutors said Crumbley acted in a grossly negligent way in storing a gun and ammunition where her son could access it and that she failed to control her child to keep him from harming others.