Justin Ross Harris, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2016 after his toddler son died in a hot SUV while he worked in a Cobb office, has had his conviction overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court.
In a ruling released Wednesday, the court decided in a 6-3 vote 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 was arrested in June 2014 after his 22-month-old son, Cooper Harris, died after being left alone in his father’s Hyundai Tucson in a parking lot at Home Depot headquarters in Vinings for several hours.
Harris, then 33, was a web developer at Home Depot. The boy was left in the vehicle with the windows rolled up, and as temperatures reached nearly 100 degrees inside.
Harris said he accidentally left the boy in the Tucson, but prosecutors alleged at the trial that his motive was to kill his son to get out of his marriage.
In a case that gained national attention, Harris was convicted of murder by a Glynn County jury—the trial was moved to the Georgia coast but prosecuted by the Cobb District Attorney’s Office—and sentenced to life without parole.
Harris also received a 12-year sentence for exchanging sexually explicit messages with minor girls.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court majority, led by Chief Justice David Nahmias, concluded that the sexual offenses should have been tried separately from the murder charge.
While referring to what it called Harris’ “repugnant character,” the court majority concluded in overturning the murder conviction that “because the properly admitted evidence that Appellant maliciously and intentionally left Cooper to die was far from overwhelming, we cannot say that it is highly probable that the erroneously admitted sexual evidence did not contribute to the jury’s guilty verdicts.”
You can read the full ruling by clicking here; there are many instances of sexually graphic behavior, language and online communications, so reader discretion is advised.
Harris could receive a new murder trial, but the Cobb District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday afternoon that it will file a motion for reconsideration of the Supreme Court ruling.
Harris has been incarcerated at the Macon State Prison, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
On the morning of June 18, 2014, he was to have dropped Cooper off at Home Depot’s day care center before going to his office. Father and son had eaten breakfast at Chick-fil-A, but the boy was left in the Tucson after his father was running late for work.
According to trial evidence, while his son remained inside a hot vehicle, at his office Harris continued to send lewd messages to women.
The evidence showed that Harris returned to his car after 4 p.m., and found Cooper in a car seat in the back of the SUV with the windows rolled up and unconscious.
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?”
The Cobb Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that hypothermia was the cause of death.
The Supreme Court ruling noted that Harris’ attorneys objected during his trial to the admission of the sexually-related evidence, but the objections were overruled by Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley.
She also did not give the jury “limiting” instructions related to that evidence before it began deliberations. Staley, who retired in May, denied a motion by Harris’ attorney for a new murder trial last year.
“Merely piling on more evidence to show the supposedly limitless extent of Appellant’s sexual ‘depravity’ did nothing to strengthen the link between his sexual obsession and the key question at trial—did this obsession motivate Appellant to kill Cooper?” the Supreme Court ruling concluded.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Charles Bethel wrote that he saw “no abuse of the court trial’s discretion” in deciding that severing the cases was unnecessary, and that introducing evidence about Harris’ sexual desires was not improper.
“Evidence that some of that conduct . . . was criminal fit neatly with the State’s overall theory of its case against Harris and was, in fact, part of the State’s narrative regarding Harris’s motive to murder his son,” Bethel wrote.
Related:
- Cobb Superior Court judges appoint new Circuit Defender
- East Cobb man sentenced in fatal Sandy Plains Road crash
- Cobb Superior Court Chief Judge, bench incumbents re-elected
- Ex-business partner of murdered East Cobb man gets 20 years
- Longtime Cobb Judge Mary Staley Clark announces retirement
- East Cobb man sentenced to two life terms for child molestations
- Mt. Bethel Church, UMC ask judge to settle lawsuits
- Cobb DA releases statement on Arbery murder convictions
- Former East Cobb attorney sentenced in litigation fraud scheme
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