When the involuntary manslaughter trial begins this week for the father of the Oxford school shooter, the Michigan courtroom will be heavy with a sense of déjà vu.

The trial of James Crumbley, which starts Tuesday with jury selection in Oakland County, will rehash much of his wife’s blockbuster trial that made her the first parent of a school shooter to face homicide-level charges for her child’s crime. Jennifer Crumbley was convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter in February and could face up to 15 years in prison when sentenced next month.

James Crumbley faces the same charges and potential sentence as his wife. He will also face the same judge, the same prosecutors, many of the same witnesses and much of the same evidence from his wife’s trial. James Crumbley will have a new jury that will determine if he is guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Hana St. Juliana, 14; Tate Myre, 16; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17 by failing to properly store the gun or show “reasonable care” in preventing his son from harming others.

Both parents have been in jail unable to post their combined $1 million bond since they were arrested four days after their son killed four Oxford High School students and wounded several others in the worst school shooting in state history. It was an unprecedented move, at the time, to prosecute the parents of a school shooter on such serious charges and remains on the leading edge of a strategy by some prosecutors to expand the public’s view of who can be held accountable when a child picks up a gun.

Legal analysts who spoke to The Washington Post expect prosecutors to approach James Crumbley’s case much in the same way they did Jennifer Crumbley’s.

Similar evidence, strategic differences

“This is going to resemble Jennifer Crumbley’s trial to a significant extent,” said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University who specializes in evidence and criminal law and who has followed the Crumbley cases. “A lot of the important evidence is going to be the same across the two trials, including the evidence that points to the parents’ awareness that their son posed a danger.”

Critically, jurors in James Crumbley’s case will hear about the text messages their son sent to a friend telling him that his parents refused or ignored his requests for mental health treatment, Roth said.

Ethan Crumbley was sentenced last year to life without parole after pleading guilty to two-dozen counts for which he was charged as an adult. Since Ethan Crumbley is appealing his sentence, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Matthews said she would not allow him to be called as a witness in his parents’ cases knowing he would assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Much the evidence from the first trial was specific to Jennifer Crumbley’s behavior apart from her son, including an extramarital affair and the extensive time and resources she spent on her horse-riding hobby to contrast with the distressed text messages her son sent her that she often ignored, said Mark Chutkow, a Michigan defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. That evidence is unlikely to be seen as relevant in James Crumbley’s trial.

Though James Crumbley’s trial is expected to follow a similar contour as his wife’s, legal experts pointed to a handful of factual and strategic differences.

“The father might be more sympathetic than the mom because he seemed more devastated about what the son had done — you could see that in some of the videotapes of the police interviews,” Chutkow said. “The mom, by comparison seem somewhat aloof.”

But while James Crumbley may be successfully portrayed as the more gentle or concerned parent, he could also be held to a higher standard than his wife in terms of responsibility for securing the handgun, Chutkow said. Prosecutors have evidence against James Crumbley that they didn’t have to argue in his wife’s case, including the fact that he was a gun owner who made the purchase of the Sig Sauer 9mm gun gifted to their son; that he supposedly understood gun safety and that he was chiefly responsible for the weapon his son accessed — in part because James Crumbley didn’t change the factory set combination lock on the gun case.

Evidence shown in Jennifer Crumbley’s trial shows her husband telling sheriff’s deputies he hid the gun in an armoire in the parent’s bedroom, and hid the bullets separately under piles of jeans.

As with Jennifer Crumbley’s case, James Crumbley will also face scrutiny for his response to an in-school meeting the morning of the shooting.

The Crumbleys were summoned to school on Nov. 30 after a teacher flagged disturbing images their son had written on a math assignment; they included a drawing of a gun, a bleeding, bullet-ridden body and the words “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me,” “blood everywhere,” and “the world is dead.”

Jennifer Crumbley and her son’s counselor and school dean testified that while the adults were all concerned, the school staffers understood they were dealing with a mental health issue and not a disciplinary action and could not send him home. The parents, meanwhile, said they had to return to work and did not take their son home after he expressed a desire to return to class.

The Crumbleys did not mention they had recently bought a gun or taken their son to a shooting range, and no one checked his backpack before he returned to class. When James Crumbley learned hours later that a shooting had unfolded at his son’s school, he called 911.

“I have a missing gun at my house,” James Crumbley said, according to a 911 call recording. “I raced home just to, like, find out, and I think my son took the gun. I don’t know if it’s him. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m, like, really freaking out.”

Advantages and downsides of going second

Legal experts were mixed on which side benefits from being the second trial in a case where defendants are tried separately.

“The second defendant gets a preview of sorts and gets to determine how to respond to the government’s arguments more effectively. They also get the opportunity to take testimony from the first trial and cross examine them for inconsistencies,” said Roth, the Cardozo Law School professor. Prosecutors, however, get a chance to improve their case and sharpen their arguments for a second matchup.

Chutkow, the former federal prosecutor, expects James Crumbley to “think twice” before taking the witness stand. If he does testify, he will have studied his wife’s testimony to avoid similar pitfalls, Chutkow said (according to court records, James Crumbley filed a request for the transcripts of his wife’s trial before the verdict came in). Jennifer Crumbley’s jury foreperson told NBC News in an interview after the verdict that her admission that “she wouldn’t have done anything different” doomed her with jurors.

The defense heads into Tuesday’s trial contending with recent rulings against them: Judge Matthews denied their motion to disqualify testimony from a student who survived the shooting, a motion to keep Ethan Crumbley’s journal writings out of evidence, and a motion to change venue.

The latter has Michigan defense attorney Margaret Raben concerned about seating a jury that doesn’t have some knowledge of the trial. It will probably raise the bar for who Judge Matthews seats as she attempts to find an impartial jury — and root out “the people who are going to write their book,” said Raben of prospective jurors who might jockey for a seat in hopes of profiting off a tell-all later.

“For three weeks, that trial was all over the front-page news,” Raben said. “I don’t know how anyone watching the local news would have been able to avoid learning a great deal about the case.”