Cooper Harris was 22 months old when he died on June 18, 2014 in Georgia. His father, Justin Ross Harris, had left him in a vehicle for seven hours.
Justin was found guilty of malice murder and felony murder. He has recently been released from prison and we have had many requests to cover the case.
As some background, Justin is known as Ross in most articles. He was born in 1980. He worked for a while as a police dispatcher in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
In 2012, he graduated from the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in commerce and business administration. After graduation, he moved to Georgia to work for The Home Depot as a web developer.
Justin married a woman named Leanna Taylor. I believe this may have been around 2008. Leanna said that two years after they were married, they were no longer connecting in the bedroom. Two years later, Leanna discovered that Ross had been sexting other women. He continued to do so for another four years.
Leanna said that when she found out about the sexting, her “reaction to that wasn’t very good,” and that she acted very upset and burst out crying.
“It did a lot of damage to our ability to connect, intimately, in my opinion,” she said.
Leanna said they discovered that Ross had low testosterone and found it hard to perform sexually. She said she initially blamed herself for it, but they went regularly to couples counseling and to a small group of couples that met at their church to try and work through their issues.
Ross would tell some of the women he had been sexting with that he was cheating on his wife because of a self-diagnosed sex addiction. He told them that he and Leanna were not sexually compatible.
Despite having issues, the couple started to try for a baby in February 2011. It took them awhile to fall pregnant and they went through medical testing. On Ross’ birthday in November 2011, Leanna found out she was pregnant with Cooper.
Cooper was born on August 2, 2012.
This is info about him from his obituary:
He was a happy baby. He loved to speak with anyone and made impacts on many people’s lives in his short time. Cooper loved trucks and cars and often told them bye as we left parking lots. He had just learned the color red and as we passed red vehicles, he would tell his mommy and his daddy “bye red car, bye red truck.” He was a joy and will always be cherished.
Having a child did not fix Ross and Leanna’s relationship. In 2013, Leanna picked up Ross’ phone to check the time and she saw a push notification of a message that was from a female.
She told Ross at this time that if he wanted a divorce, she would agree to it.
“He was very concerned I was going to leave him, very concerned I was going to take Cooper,” she said.
The morning of the car incident was June 18, 2014, a Wednesday. The plan was for Ross to take Cooper to daycare on his way to work.
Just before 9am, Ross and Cooper had breakfast at a Chick-fil-A restaurant which was a mile from Ross’ workplace. Cooper was seen on CCTV and was said to be ‘wide awake and happy.’
Ross then drove his Hyundai Tucson SUV to the Home Depot where he worked. Cooper was strapped into a rear-facing car seat in the back.
Ross got out of the car and entered the office at 9.25am. Cooper remained in the car.
Leanna texted Ross that morning. ‘Get to work OK?’ she asked.
‘Yup yup,’ Harris replied. ‘We’re gonna go to the early movie so I should be home close to 7.’
At 12.30pm, Ross and two friends went to lunch at a nearby Publix. Ross had been picked up by the friends. They then went to a nearby Home Depot where Ross purchased light bulbs. His friends dropped Ross back to the workplace parking lot. He opened the driver’s side door of the SUV and put the bulbs inside.
By 1 p.m., the temperature inside his car where Cooper had been trapped had risen to over 100 degrees as it sat in direct sunlight.
By 3:30, the car seat that held Cooper was 125 degrees.
At 3.16pm, Ross texted Leanna and said “When are you going to get my buddy?”
At 4.16pm, around 7 hours after he first left the vehicle, Ross finished work and returned to it. He had plans to go to see 22 Jump Street at a movie theatre with friends after work.
Ross drove for a few minutes, and at 4.23pm, he stopped in the parking lot of a shopping center. Witnesses reported hearing squealing tires and a man screaming ‘What have I done?’
Ross jumped out of the vehicle and left the driver’s door open. He rushed and got Cooper out of the backseat.
Bystanders rushed to help and started CPR on Cooper. Police and firefighters were patrolling the area and arrived within seconds of a 911 call.
By 4.58pm, Cobb County police spokesman Officer Mike Bowman confirmed that Cooper had been pronounced dead. Ross was handcuffed and placed into the back of a patrol car because he cursed at an officer.
Ross was apparently not the one to call 911, but he called someone else to tell them Cooper was dead. When an officer told him to get off his phone, he refused and even said, “F*** you” before an officer took his phone and handcuffed him, the detective said.
Ross told police that he had forgotten that Cooper was still in his car seat.
Temperatures that day reached 92f or 33c. It was estimated that by noon, Cooper was dead.
At 10pm that night, Ross was arrested and charged with murder. He was booked into Cobb County Jail.
Leanna has spoken about that day. She said she went to pick up Cooper at daycare and he was not signed in. She said that sometimes happened, even though he was there.
When she found out that Cooper was not there, “I just kind of went into a panic,” she said.
She added that she thought at the time, “Ross must’ve left him in the car. That’s the only thing that could’ve made sense.”
Ross and Leanna met in an interview room soon after Cooper’s death. Ross told his wife that Cooper looked “peaceful” and that his eyes were closed when he was removed from the vehicle. He told his wife, “I dreaded how he would look.” – note the past tense.
A detective said that Cooper’s eyes and mouth were not closed when he was taken out of the SUV.
At another point in the interview room, Leanna asked her husband about what he had said to police. “She asked him – she had him sit down, and he starts going through this. And she looks at him, and she’s like, ‘Well, did you say too much?’ ” Detective Stoddard would later say.
An autopsy showed Cooper died of hyperthermia. He would have likely had suffered nausea, a headache, anxiety and possibly seizures, a medical examiner testified at the trial.
Cooper likely struggled as he became more uncomfortable. Small abrasions on his head, hands and feet were likely caused from the painful rubbing against hot parts of the car seat, according to the medical examiner.
A toxicology report on Cooper showed negative results for drugs or other chemicals.
Cooper’s funeral was held on June 28, 2014.
By phone from jail, Ross thanked his family and friends for standing behind him. Leanna spoke at the funeral “[Cooper’s] in the most peaceful, wonderful place there is.”
On August 8, 2014, Leanna stated in a crime victim report that she believed Ross was innocent and she said he was a ‘wonderful father.’
“Am I angry with Ross?” she said. “Absolutely not. It has never crossed my mind. Ross is and was and will be, if we have more children, a wonderful father. Ross is a wonderful daddy and leader for our household. Cooper meant the world to him.”
On September 4, 2014, Ross was charged with malice murder, two counts of felony murder, cruelty to children in the first and second degree, criminal attempt to commit a felony and dissemination of harmful materials to minors.
Later that month, Cobb County DA Vic Reynolds announced that the prosecution would not seek the death penalty.
On October 13, 2014, Ross pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The investigation into Cooper’s death focused a lot on Ross’ affairs.
Police discovered that while Cooper was dying in the car, Ross had been sexting with six different people, including one under the age of consent.
Ross also visited a Reddit page called “child-free” and read four articles. He also allegedly searched how to survive in prison.
Police also looked at the internet history of Ross and Leanna. Both of them had googled ‘car deaths and how they occur’ prior to Cooper’s death.
Five days before Cooper died, Ross twice viewed a sort of homemade public service announcement in which a veterinarian demonstrates on video the dangers of leaving someone or something inside a hot car.
Leanna told police that she had recently seen a story on a state initiative aimed at reminding people not to leave children in cars and that it was a fear of hers.
Ross’s explanation was that “he recently researched, through the Internet, child deaths inside vehicles and what temperature it needs to be for that to occur,” police have said. Ross told investigators “he was fearful that this could happen.”
During questioning, Leanna “made similar statements regarding researching in car deaths and how it occurs,” according to police.
Regarding the phone call/s that Ross made after Cooper died in the parking lot, he told police he couldn’t reach anyone on his telephone, but phone records show that he made three calls after he discovered his son’s body, and one between him and his employer lasted six minutes.
Police also discovered that Ross had been worried about losing his job. They found texts between him and Leanna that indicated they were having financial trouble.
Ross had recently been passed over for a promotion.
The couple had two life insurance policies out on Cooper – one for $2k and one for $25k.
Pretrial hearings began in September 2015.
In October 2015, Judge Staley said that online chats that Ross had with other women would be admissible in court. Prosecutors claim that in those chats, Ross told women that he would leave his wife if not for their son. In one of those chats, held on the morning that Cooper was last alive, Ross posted, “I love my son and all, but we both need escapes.” The police say this is a motive to kill.
Leanna filed for divorce from Ross in February 2016, before the trial started.
On March 4, 2016, eight new charges were filed against Harris, including two counts of sexual exploitation of children and six of disseminating harmful material to a minor.
Just selection began on April 11, 2016. 239 people were summoned. Selection ran for two weeks and an overwhelming majority of prospective jurors said they thought Ross was guilty. Several expressed statements of disgust towards him, including that he “rot in hell” and “needs to go down.”
By April 29, 41 prospective jurors had qualified. Ross’ defense team requested a change of venue for the trial. In May, Judge Staley granted the request. She said that she had witnessed firsthand the “pervasive bias” against Harris and that trying the case in Cobb County “would not be just.”
The trial was then scheduled for September 21, 2016 in Brunswick.
Jury selection restarted in September. By October 3, 6 men and 6 women had been selected as jurors and the trial started.
Prosecutors alleged that Ross had intentionally left Cooper in the car in order to have affairs and sexual relationships.
The prosecution called 51 witnesses during the trial. The defense called 18 witnesses.
At the trial, Brett Gallimore, a police officer, testified that Ross did not cry when Cooper died. He said he felt Ross was feigning grief. This was the same officer that Ross swore at after being on his phone.
One witness testified that he took over performing CPR after he observed that Ross was “fumbling around” and improperly performing CPR, though the witness said he knew Cooper was dead, comparing his attempts at breath support to “blowing into a busted bag.’
During the trial, the lightbulb purchase was also discussed. Detectives originally thought that Ross must have seen Cooper at the time he put the purchase in the vehicle. CCTV showed that Ross did not put his head inside the car and his eye line remained above the car’s roof the whole time.
Ross’ search of the child-free Reddit was also brought up in court. A friend of Ross’ testified and said that he had sent the link to him as a joke.
Ross clicked on the site and quickly replied ‘Grossness’, defense attoney Maddox Kilgore showed the jury.
Leanna testified in court. She had by this point divorced Ross. She did say that Ross would never have intentionally hurt Cooper. She also said “He destroyed my life. I am humiliated. I may never trust anyone again. If I never see him again after today, it is fine with me.”
Many of the women that Ross communicated or had sex with appeared in court.
The prosecution ran through Ross’ sexting. Nine enlarged photos of Ross’ penis were shown in court.
Janie Meadows testified in court. She had been a teenager at the time that Cooper died and she had been in some type of ‘relationship’ with Ross.
‘He said if his situation had been different he would be with me instead of her.” she said.
‘If Cooper wasn’t in the picture I probably would have left by now,’ he told Janie according to her testimony.
Janie and Ross had met when she was 18 on the Skout dating app in 2013. She said she did not know his real age at first.
She said that Ross told her that Leanna caught him cheating on her, and that his marriage ‘was falling apart’.
“I just had a really bad breakup,’ she said. ’Ross just kind of showed up at the time I needed.’
Ross told Janie that he was single at first. He pressed her to meet with him but she was ‘sketched out,’ she said.
But they eventually met a few months later in a store where she worked and they kissed. It didn’t go any further, though he told her he loved her, she said.
The reality of his marital status emerged as a result of a game called ‘Two Lies and a Truth,’ she continued. He told her he was married and had a child, and he divulged his true age.
‘I was taken aback by it,’ she admitted.
Still, they talked and texted at length for nearly every day. ‘I fell in love with him’ she said.’
‘He told me he loved me every day,” she said.
The jury also heard from two more young women who had been involved with Ross.
Molly Sims was 18 years old when she met him on the Skout site. She knew he was married. They never met but texted through that site and Kik, she said.
“We talked about everyday things, but it would get sexual sometimes. He would change the subject to make it sexual.’
They exchanged nude pictures, she added.
The relationship ended when she found a boyfriend two years later, she said.
Another female, Elizabeth Smith, also testified. She said she had sex with Ross in his car, in a parking lot just off the interstate.
She was 21 when she met Ross on Kik in January, 2014. They chatted nearly every day.
Though they never met face-to-face again, their texting conversations continued until the day Cooper died, evidence showed.
Ross mentioned ‘problems in the bedroom’ with Leanna, she said.
Before sunrise on the day Cooper died, Ross texted Elizabeth and suggested they meet for oral sex. He asked if she could meet him later that day, she testified.
‘Did he ever tell you that his child was going to be in the car?’ defense attorney prodded.
‘No,’ she said.
Alexandra Swindell, said that she was an 18-year-old university student in Alabama when she met Ross online in 2012. His online name was ‘BamaXH’.”
He never mentioned that he was married or had a child, she told the jury.
She told the court how Ross picked her up at her dormitory room at the University of Alabama and drove to a park area where they talked and kissed. Then she performed oral sex with him, she said.
They never met again, but they continued to chat by texting for a few months before fading away.
Alexandra said that her conversations with Ross rekindled several weeks before Cooper died and were sexual in nature.
The day Cooper died, she texted Ross and indicated she wanted to have sex with him again.
An investigator told the court Ross texted an unidentified woman on the social app Whisper the day Cooper died, saying that his son was ‘awesome.’
He wrote that Cooper woke him up at 5:30 a.m. that morning.
‘He wrote “I have a son” who decided “I’m gonna get up early. Ha ha Ohhhh gotta love kids [sic],”‘ the investigator said.
Ross told the unidentified woman that Cooper was two years old.
‘What a great age,’ the unidentified woman replied.
‘He’s awesome,’ Harris said.
Caitlin Hickey Floyd also testified. She was from Atlanta and had met Ross on the app Whisper.
She was single at the time she met him online. He told her he was married. ‘I asked if he had a conscience. He said ‘No.’ He never said he had a child,’ she said.
A few days before Cooper died, Ross texted her ‘I am so horny’ and ‘too much of a sexual freak.”
On the day that Cooper died, Ross was texting Caitlin. He asked to see pictures of the woman naked. He said, ‘Can I see your t**s?’ she told the court.
She sent him a picture of her breasts. Ross replied, ‘Mmmmm.’
‘I asked if he wanted to play with them. He said, ‘F*** yes I do,’ she said.
Daniela Doerr, a former prostitute, told the court that Ross had sex with her three times in the weeks before his son died.
Hehad contacted her after finding an ad that listed her services, she said.
‘He had no presence, he was just dumpy. It was vanilla sex,’ she told the court.
Dr. Gene Brewer, a psychology professor and memory and attention expert, testified for the defense that it was “absolutely possible” that Ross had left Cooper in the car as a result of a memory lapse,and that there was “nothing unique about this case as relative to the other cases where this has happened.”
On cross examination, Dr Brewer said that he was not aware of other cases in which a parent had texted “I need an escape. I love my son and all but we both need an escape” ten minutes prior to leaving a child in a car.
The trial ran for just over a month. On November 14, 2016, the jury found Ross guilty on all counts.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole plus 32 years.
In January 2017, Ross’s legal team filed a motion for a new trial with the trial court, arguing that prejudicial testimony (revelations of Ross’s numerous affairs, and self-admitted sex addiction) “made it an absolute impossibility” for Ross to have received a fair trial. The motion was denied on May 20, 2021.
In January 2022, Ross’ lawyer Mitch Durham took the case to the Supreme Court of Georgia.
He argued that the evidence about Ross’ affairs and sex life were nonprobative and prejudicial.
On June 22, 2022, in a 6–3 decision, the court agreed, finding that the evidence regarding Ross’s sexual activities was “needlessly cumulative and prejudicial.” The convictions on the murder and cruelty counts were overturned. The court’s majority opinion said that the state had introduced “a substantial amount of evidence to lead the jury to answer a … legally problematic question: what kind of man is [Ross]?”
It held that the case should have been severed, such that there would have been separate trials for sex-crime charges and murder/cruelty charges.
A dissenting opinion said that the state was “entitled to introduce, in detail, evidence of the nature, scope, and extent of the truly sinister motive it ascribed to [Ross].”
On May 25, 2023, the murder and cruelty charges against Ross were dismissed. The convictions of felony attempt to commit sexual exploitation of children and dissemination of harmful material to minors remained.
In a statement, Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Brody said that, after an eleven-month review, it determined that the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision would prevent it from relying on “[c]rucial motive evidence”, and, in light of that restriction, it had decided it would not retry Ross on the murder and cruelty charges.
Ross’s attorneys responded to the dismissal by characterizing it as a confirmation of Ross’s innocence and disputing whether prosecution of parents such as Ross deters unintentional deaths, saying, “Charging a grieving parent for an unintentional memory failure does nothing to prevent the tragedy from happening to another. In fact, child fatalities from hot cars increased after Ross'[s] 2016 trial, the most widely reported hot car death case in history.”
In 2024, District Attorney Brody lost re-election as an incumbent to Sonya Allen. Allen ran on a platform of denial of justice to Cobb County, citing the handling of the Harris murder case.
In June 2024, Justin Ross Harris was released from prison.
SOURCE LIST
https://www.ajc.com/news/crime–law/timeline-toddler-death/tRqNpJvmBVNeyhhVSLifiN
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/02/us/justin-ross-harris-son-hot-car-death/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Cooper_Harris
https://people.com/crime/justin-ross-harris-ex-says-terrible-husband-loving-dad
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/tuscaloosa/name/cooper-harris-obituary?id=6876281
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/timeline-the-justin-ross-harris-case/I8a6NNLj2DsMp0IRTYSrNP
https://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/03/justice/georgia-hot-car-toddler-death/index.html
