Death of Cooper Harris

On June 22, 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the convictions of 41-year-old Justin Ross Harris for the death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper, granting him a retrial.

Harris's first "appeal", being the motion for a new trial, was heard by the trial judge, Mary Staley Clark, beginning December 14, 2020, the judge denying the motion on May 20, 2021. On January 18, 2022, the Supreme Court of Georgia, heard arguments for a new trial by Harris' lawyer Mitch Durham. The sexual messaging acts did not make it more probable that Mr. Harris would intentionally kill his child,” he told the court. Also during the session, Chief Justice David Nahmias and Justice Nels Peterson repeatedly questioned Cobb County prosecutor Linda Dunikoski whether all the evidence about Harris’ deviant sexual behavior should have been allowed into evidence. All of that evidence made the same point: “This is a terrible person,” Peterson said. “And I will say you did a remarkable job of proving he’s a terrible person. But proving he is a terrible person isn’t the same as proving he murdered his child.”

After Harris's conviction, his ex-wife Leanna Taylor continued to defend his innocence. In an interview with ABC News's Amy Robach in February 2017, she stated that she has always believed Cooper's death was an accident.

In January 2017, Harris's legal team filed a motion for a new trial with the trial court, arguing that prejudicial testimony (revelations of Harris's numerous affairs, and self-admitted sex addiction) "made it an absolute impossibility" for the (then) 36-year-old to receive a fair trial; however, as of September 2019, Harris's team was not prepared to go forward, not yet having read all of the thousands of pages of court transcripts.

In February 2016, Leanna Harris filed for divorce. After the divorce was finalized, she retained her maiden name, Leanna Taylor. In spite of the divorce, Leanna continued to defend her former husband's innocence regarding the charges of murder in Cooper's death.

Harris was convicted of malice murder (amongst other charges) on November 14, 2016, and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole plus 32 years.

Justin Ross Harris's murder trial was held before Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark, who, after nearly three weeks of jury selection, decided that pretrial publicity had made it too difficult to find a fair jury in Cobb County, where the boy died, and in April 2015 granted a defense request to relocate the trial. A jury in Glynn County, led by Cobb County Senior Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring, spent about a month listening to evidence in the case and deliberated for four days.

Cooper Harris was a 22-month-old toddler who died of heat stroke on June 18, 2014, in Vinings, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, after being left strapped in the rear-facing car seat of his father's SUV for approximately seven hours. Though he has maintained that the death was a tragic accident, Cooper's father Justin Ross Harris was arrested and charged with his son's murder. On November 14, 2016, after a jury trial that garnered national media attention, Harris was found guilty of malice murder and felony murder among other charges, in a verdict that has faced some criticism. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 32 years. On June 22, 2022, Justin Ross Harris's convictions relating to Cooper's death were overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court, concluding that he had not received a fair trial, and will be given a retrial.

On the morning of June 18, 2014, Justin Ross Harris was supposed to take Cooper to daycare on his way to work. Harris and Cooper ate breakfast at a Chick-fil-A restaurant less than a mile from his office on Cumberland Parkway, near its intersection with Paces Ferry Road in Vinings, Georgia, at or around 8:57 A.M. After breakfast, Harris drove his SUV, a Hyundai Tucson, to the Home Depot office where he worked, with Cooper strapped in a rear-facing car seat in the back. He then entered the office at 9:25 A.M., leaving Cooper in his car seat.

Justin Harris, who goes by his middle name Ross, was born in 1980. He briefly worked as a police dispatcher in Tuscaloosa until 2009, according to police spokesman Sgt. Brent Blankley. Harris graduated from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2012, receiving a bachelor's degree in commerce and business administration. From there, Harris moved to Georgia to work for The Home Depot as a web developer.