The Georgia man, whose young son died after leaving the boy in a hot car for hours, appealed his conviction to the state Supreme Court, arguing that prosecutors presented the jury with “an avalanche” of inadequate evidence, who eventually found him guilty of murder and child cruelty, among other charges, according to records and a report.
Justin Ross Harris, 41, argues through attorneys that the judge overseeing his 2016 trial should never have allowed evidence of Harris’ extramarital communications and personal rendezvous to be presented in court because his sexual misconduct was unrelated to his death 22-year-old had to do. month-old son, Cooper, and were adverse.
“The sexual messaging did not make it more likely that Mr. Harris would intentionally kill his child,” Harris’ attorney Mitch Durham told the Georgia Supreme Court during Tuesday morning’s hearing, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Justin Ross Harris listens during his trial at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, in this October 3, 2016 file photo. The Georgia man found guilty of the 2014 murder of his young son, who died after being left in a hot car for hours, is asking the state’s highest court to overturn his conviction.
(Stephen B. Morton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool, File)
Harris, who moved to the Atlanta area from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 2012 to work, told police he forgot to drop his son off at daycare on the morning of June 18, 2014 and drove straight to his job as a web developer for Home Depot, not remembering that Cooper was still in his car seat.
Cooper died after sitting in the back seat of the vehicle outside his father’s office in suburban Atlanta for about seven hours, where temperatures that day were at least in the high 80s.
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Prosecutors argued in court that Harris was unhappily married and had deliberately killed his son to free himself. Defense attorneys described him as a doting father and said the boy’s death was a tragic accident.
Ross Harris was sentenced to life in prison without parole for leaving his son Cooper in a hot SUV to die.
During Tuesday’s hearing, judges asked Cobb County Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski about the government’s decision to include so much evidence related to Harris’ sexual activities, the AJC said.
“I will say that you have done a remarkable job in proving that he is a terrible person,” Judge Nels Peterson reportedly said during the hearing. “But proving he’s a horrible person isn’t the same as proving he murdered his child.”
Peterson later added, “Maybe underage news, evidence of prostitutes and all of that was so much more prejudicial than conclusive,” the report said.
One example reportedly mentioned during the hearing was the prosecution’s decision to include, with the judge’s permission, nine full-size color photographs of Harris’ genitals.
Dunikoski, who was recently involved in the state’s successful case against the three men charged in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, said she had “no idea” why prosecutors decided to do it, reports said.
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The prosecutor noted that the jury had an option to convict Harris of something other than murder in connection with that son’s death, but chose to find him guilty of murder, according to WSB radio.
Dunikoski went on to tell the judges that there was “overwhelming evidence that he murdered his child,” but the judges questioned her testimony.
“You really mean to say that the evidence of intent here was overwhelming?” asked Chief Justice David Nahmias, according to AJC.
Dunikoski then reportedly clarified, “I expressed myself wrongly. … Considering the evidence as a reasonable jury would view it, there is a strong possibility that the evidence supporting the sexting messages did not contribute to the murder verdict.”
Harris was found guilty on eight counts of his son’s murder in November 2016. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and an additional 32 years in prison for other crimes.
A defense brief, filed in the High Court ahead of Tuesday’s arguments, describes how police officers who interacted with Harris in the days after his son’s death did not believe he was behaving as a father would in the circumstances should do and began examining all aspects of his life.
Investigators “pecked at the mountain of electronic data to support the conclusion that (Harris) murdered his son and ignored evidence to the contrary,” the defense brief said. Evidence showed that he was a loving and caring father, although his exchanging sexually explicit messages and graphic photos with teenage women and girls and meeting some of them for sex revealed that Harris was not a great husband, states in the letter.
Durham has further argued that there was insufficient evidence that Harris intended to kill his son and that some of his internet searches, activities, and messages were skewed to fit this narrative. He says the evidence of sexual misconduct served only to bias the jury against Harris.
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The defense attorney also says the trial judge made mistakes when he required the defense to disclose a defense expert’s notes, allowed the introduction of 3D animated video, and restricted cross-examination of certain witnesses. Each of these errors is enough to justify a new trial, but even if the Supreme Court finds each one relatively benign, their collective adverse effect is enough to authorize a new trial, Durham argues.
In a file photo dated Thursday July 3, 2014, Justin Ross Harris, the father of a toddler who died after police said he was left in a hot car for about seven hours, cries as he arrives at his bail hearing in the Cobb County Magistrates Court in Marietta, Georgia.
(The Associated Press)
Meanwhile, the state has argued that the evidence of Harris’s sexual conduct outside of his marriage is relevant because it illustrates his motive for killing his son. In order to conclude that Harris did not act intentionally or negligently in leaving his son in a hot car, the Supreme Court would have to “review the evidence of Harris’ double life and its deep connection to his motive for killing Cooper.” to ignore”.
Prosecutors go on to say that the trial judge correctly ruled on those issues and Harris’s convictions and judgment should be upheld.
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“Cooper Harris was not given a second chance on June 18, 2014, and his father has failed to establish that he is entitled to a second chance on this appeal,” the district attorney’s filing reads.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.