On Thursday, prosecutors announced that Justin Ross Harris would not be retried for the 2014 de@th of his 22-month-old baby in a hot car. The m*rder conviction was reversed by the Georgia Supreme Court last year.
This judgment from last year overturned Harris’ life sentence but did not affect the 12-year term he was given at trial in 2016 on unrelated offenses. Harris’s retrial was dropped after the Cobb County district attorney’s office conducted a “thorough review of the entire case file,” according to a press statement.
“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,” the release reads. “Therefore, after much thought and deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to not retry Justin Ross Harris on the reversed counts of the indictment.”
Cooper Harris, Harris’s kid, died in June of 2014 after being left in the car for seven hours as Harris went to work. One of Harris’s lawyers stated on Thursday that his client is “thankful that today’s dismissal may begin to restore Cooper’s legacy as a child much loved by his parents.” Harris is happy to hear he will not be retried.
“Ross has always accepted the moral responsibility for Cooper’s death. But after all these years of investigation and review, this dismissal of charges confirms that Cooper’s death was unintentional and therefore not a crime,” attorney Carlos Rodriguez said.
“Throughout the course of representing Ross, we have learned that these tragic accidents often happen while the child is in the care of a loving parent. Ross was no different,” Rodriguez said.
I found the following links helpful while learning more news:
- Heartbreaking Loss: Teen’s De@th on 6th Street Bridge
- Woodland Hills Stabbing Update: 17-year-old Arr*sted in Connection With Metro Bus Driver Att@ck
‘Cooper will Always be Remembered’
In 2016, a court found Harris guilty on three counts of m*rder, two counts of cruelty to minors in connection with his son’s de@th, and three counts related to his computer exchanges of s*xual material with another juvenile. In the same year he was found guilty of all four crimes, he received a life sentence without the possibility of release for the m*rder of his son.
Harris’ m*rder conviction was reversed by the Georgia Supreme Court in June 2022, with a 6-3 vote finding that the state’s presentation of his extramarital affairs as a possible motive for the de@th of his son had an unjust prejudiced effect on the jury.
The news can be confirmed by the tweet below:
Justin Ross Harris, whose murder conviction for the 2014 hot-car death of his 22-month-old son in Georgia was overturned by the state’s Supreme Court last year, will not be retried, prosecutors said https://t.co/ru6A3MHsNz
— CNN (@CNN) May 26, 2023
The court concluded that “far from overwhelming” evidence suggested Harris deliberately abandoned Cooper, causing his death. All of his convictions were reversed save for the ones involving his son. The court ruled that Harris did not demonstrate that any of the other defendants were wrong.
“We would like to thank the Cobb County Police Department, all current and prior DA’s Office staff, and all other agencies who worked tirelessly for years to obtain justice for Cooper,” the prosecutors’ news release reads. “Cooper will always be remembered by this Office and those who fought for him.”
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