Cobb District Attorney Flynn Broady said Thursday his office will not retry a man sentenced to serve life in prison in the “hot car” death of his son in 2014 but whose conviction was overturned last year.
In a 6-3 vote last June, the Supreme Court of Georgia overturned the conviction against Justin Ross Harris, whose 22-month-old son Cooper died of hypothermia being left all day at his father’s workplace in Vinings in a vehicle that was nearly nearly 100 degrees inside.
The high court ruled that evidence presented by prosecutors at Harris’ trial about his extramarital activities and sexually lewd activities and communications with girls and women was prejudicial and should have been separated from the murder indictment.
Harris continues to serve a 12-year sentence in the Georgia prison system for criminal attempt to commit sexual exploitation of a minor and distributing harmful materials to minors.
But Broady said in a release Thursday that his office is closing the murder case on Harris after a nearly year-long review, concluding that “crucial motive evidence that was admitted at the first trial in 2016 is no longer available to the State due to the majority decision of the Supreme Court.”
Broady said he disagrees with the Supreme Court ruling, which was also based on now-retired Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark’s denial of objections by Harris’ attorneys to introduce that evidence, and that she didn’t give “limiting” instructions to the jury.
Staley Clark, who retired last May, right before the Supreme Court ruling, also denied a motion by Harris’ attorney last year for a new murder trial.
The Cobb DA’s office—then led by Vic Reynolds, now a Cobb Superior Court judge—prosecuted the case in Glynn County, on the Georgia coast, due to pretrial publicity, claiming that Harris’ motive was to kill his son to get out of his marriage.
Harris, who was 33 at the time of his son’s death, was a web developer working for Home Depot.
On the morning of June 18, 2014, he was to have dropped off his son at Home Depot’s day care center before going to his office. Father and son had eaten breakfast at Chick-fil-A, but Harris was late for work, and left the boy inside his Hyundai Tucson, prosecutors said at the trial.
According to trial evidence, while Cooper remained inside a hot vehicle, Harris was at work in his office, where he sent lewd messages to women.
The evidence showed that Harris returned to his car after 4 p.m., and found Cooper unconscious in a car seat in the back of the SUV with the windows rolled up.
According to trial records, Harris removed the boy from the SUV and placed him on the pavement, and, according to witnesses, yelled “What have I done?”
Even though Harris said he simply forgot about his son in the vehicle, a jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to life without parole.
A dissenting Supreme Court opinion argued last year that there was “no abuse of the court trial’s discretion” in deciding that severing the cases against Harris was unnecessary, and that introducing evidence about his sexual desires was not improper.
“Although we disagree with the outcome of the majority opinion and agree with the reasoning set forth by the dissenting justices, we are bound by the majority’s decision,” Broady said Thursday.
He thanked law enforcement and prosecutors “who worked tirelessly for years to obtain justice for Cooper. Cooper will always be remembered by this Office and those who fought for him.”
Related:
- Ex-Cobb Police Officer sentenced for assault, child cruelty
- East Cobb man sentenced for shooting at neighbors, police
- Cobb Police capture suspect in Atlanta mass shooting
- Man sentenced to 15 years for stalking Indian Hills woman
- East Cobb investment adviser pleads guilty to Ponzi scheme
- Cobb ‘crawling burglar’ indicted on 25 counts
- Suspect in murders of Cobb Sheriff’s deputies gets 2 life terms
- East Cobb man sentenced for child sexual exploitation
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