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.
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A special needs student who was left out of the main portion of Sprayberry High School’s graduation ceremony last month pleaded with Cobb Board of Education members Thursday to make sure something like that doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Ashlynn Rich, an honor student and varsity athlete at Sprayberry, spoke during a public comment period Thursday night at school board meeting.
Shortly after her remarks and those of her mother, Linda Ramirez, who had filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Cobb County School District Superintendent Chris Ragsdale issued a formal apology.
Rich, who has Down Syndrome, was given her diploma with several other special-needs students before Sprayberry’s ceremony began. During the formal commencement, however, they waited in a hallway and were escorted out of the Kennesaw State University Convocation Center before the event had concluded.
“Graduation is a special moment and I wanted to share it with my friends, just like everyone else,” she said. “I don’t want any other student to go through what I did.”
Ragsdale said that Rich’s exclusion from Sprayberry’s commencement was “not a policy issue but a personnel issue” and he could not elaborate more. He said that “it appears to be a decision made by an individual employee, perhaps with the best intentions, that should have been made by a parent.
“On behalf of the district, I apologize to Ashlynn and her family,” Ragsdale said, as the audience broke out into applause. “What happened should not have happened.”
The Cobb school district gives parents of special-needs students options for how they want their children to participate in graduation ceremonies. Ramirez was told that Ashlynn could graduate with a small group of peers at the school, with her full class at KSU or both.
Ramirez has said she wanted her daughter to take full part in graduation at KSU, but learned about different plans right before the ceremony.
“Her exclusion was not just an oversight,” Ramirez said at Thursday’s meeting. “It was a significant and painful moment of discrimination.
“My daughter was made to feel different, separated from her peers, in a moment that she had earned. The act of segregation not only hurt Ashlynn but also sent troubling messages about how we value our students with disabilities.”
Ragsdale did say new measures were being put into place to ensure that the parents of special-needs students have input into their child’s graduation. That process will include a written agreement between school staff and parents before the ceremony.
In the aftermath of Sprayberry’s graduation, the Cobb school district initially responded to outcries on social media, saying that’s “the worst place to find accurate information about students and schools.”
But a few days later, the district acknowledged what had happened with Rich, and said that it didn’t meet the district’s standards for graduation.
During his remarks Thursday, Ragsdale said that his staff began investigating the incident following concerns from board members and the administration.
He said the new consultation process will be “ensuring there are no misunderstandings, and no employee is making a decision without the clear input of a parent or guardian of a student with an exceptionality.”
At the meeting Thursday, Ragsdale and board chairman Randy Scamihorn met with Rich and Ramirez and other supporters, who wore red in support of Rich’s favorite color.
Rich, who also operates a homemade baked goods business, intends to go to college and study culinary arts.
