Justin Ross Harris

After Ross Harris's conviction, his ex-wife and Cooper's mother Leanna Taylor continued to defend his innocence. In an interview with ABC'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 for an appeal, 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.

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.

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

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. The prosecution contended that Ross Harris had intentionally left his son Cooper in the SUV to die so that he could be freed from his familial responsibilities and could pursue a carefree life of extramarital sexual affairs. The defense, led by Maddox Kilgore, admitted that Ross Harris was responsible for Cooper's death, but only by his negligence in forgetting that Cooper was in the car. Eventually, Ross Harris was found guilty of all eight counts against him. In addition to malice murder and felony murder charges, Mr. Harris was also found guilty of sending sexual text messages to a teenage girl and sending her nude photos.

Cooper Harris was a 22-month-old toddler who died of hyperthermia on June 18, 2014, in Vinings, Georgia, after being left strapped in the rear-facing car seat of his father's SUV. Though he has maintained that the death was a tragic accident, Harris's father Justin Ross Harris was arrested and charged with his son's murder. On November 14, 2016, after a trial which garnered national media attention, Ross Harris was found guilty of malice murder, among other charges, and subsequently sentenced to life in prison without any possibility of parole.

On the morning of June 18, 2014, Justin Ross Harris was supposed to take Cooper to daycare on his way to work. Ross and Cooper ate breakfast at a Chick-fil-A restaurant less than a mile from Ross's office on Cumberland Parkway, near its intersection with Paces Ferry Road in Vinings, Georgia, at or around 8:57 A.M. After breakfast, Ross 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. Ross 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, Justin Ross Harris moved to Georgia to work for The Home Depot as a web developer.