Nearly two years after having his murder conviction overturned in the “hot car” death of his young son, Justin Ross Harris has been released from a Georgia prison.
But he’s been transferred to the Cobb County Adult Detention Center, where he is to finish serving a sentence on other related charges.
The Georgia Department of Corrections announced that Harris, now 43, was released from the Macon State Prison on Sunday, Father’s Day.
That’s where he had been since Dec. 2016, after being convicted by a Glynn County jury for the death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper.
Harris left the boy in his vehicle in June 2014 while he worked as a web developer for Home Depot in Vinings. He said during his trial that he forgot about the child, but prosecutors allege he wanted to kill his son to get out of a troubled marriage.
The boy was pronounced dead of hypothermia after being inside of Harris’ SUV for several hours, as temperatures rose above 100 degrees.
The jury in Brunswick, in Glynn County—the trial was moved to the Georgia coast due to pretrial publicity—returned a guilty verdict, and Harris was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
He also received 12 more years for misdemeanor charges of criminal attempt to commit sexual exploitation of a minor and distributing harmful materials to minors.
During the trial, Cobb prosecutors presented evidence about Harris’ extramarital activities and sexually lewd activities and communications with girls and women.
Harris’ lawyers claimed that including that evidence was prejudicial, but Judge Mary Staley Clark rejected those objections, as well as their motion for a new trial after the conviction.
In June 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying that the sexual offenses should have been tried separately from the murder charge.
Last May, Cobb District Attorney Flynn Broady said his office would not retry Harris because “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.”
Prosecutors who tried the case under former DA Vic Reynolds have been critical of Broady’s action, as has Sonya Allen, a deputy district attorney in Fulton County.
She defeated Broady in the May 21 Democratic primary and is running unopposed in the November general election.
Allen cited the Harris case as among her reasons for running and indicated that if elected she may conduct a review for a possible retrial.
According to Cobb Sheriff’s Office records, Harris was booked in the Cobb jail Sunday, on two misdemeanor counts of distribution of obscene materials to minors, a sentence that has two years remaining.
He served 10 years in state prison for a conviction of sexual exploitation of a child.
Related:
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- Man gets life for killing friend at Delk Road apartments
- East Side ES students experience ‘Courtroom to Classroom’ event
- East Cobb investment adviser sentenced for Ponzi scheme
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