{"id":37294,"date":"2022-06-22T17:30:54","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T21:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=37294"},"modified":"2022-06-24T08:12:30","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T12:12:30","slug":"georgia-supreme-court-overturns-hot-car-death-convictions-in-justin-ross-harris-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=37294","title":{"rendered":"Georgia Supreme Court overturns hot-car death convictions in Justin Ross Harris case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Justin Ross Harris<\/a> for murder and cruelty charges related to the death of his young son, Cooper, in a hot car in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence improperly admitted at trial may have swayed the jury to convict Harris, the court\u2019s majority opinion found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That improper evidence concerned other charges Harris faced related to his behavior with a 16-year-old girl between March and June 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris was convicted of attempt to commit sexual exploitation of a child and two counts of dissemination of harmful material to a minor for those activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s Supreme Court ruling overturns the murder and cruelty charges related to Cooper\u2019s death but does not overturn the convictions for the sexual crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence about Harris\u2019s sexual activities could have influenced the jury to convict him on the charges related to Cooper\u2019s death, the majority opinion found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The state introduced hundreds of explicit text messages from Harris to young women and girls during the trial. It also showed that Harris had hired a prostitute three times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe state convincingly demonstrated [Harris] was a philanderer, a pervert, and even a sexual predator,\u201d Chief Justice David Nahmias wrote in the majority opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That picture of Harris\u2019 character may have led the jurors to convict him even if they were not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he killed Cooper on purpose, Nahmias said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis evidence did little if anything to answer the key question of [Harris\u2019] intent when he walked away from Cooper,\u201d Nahmias said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt does not follow [that] because an accused person may have a bad character that he is guilty of the particular offense for which he is tried,\u201d Nahmias noted.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trial court should have separated the trial for Cooper\u2019s death from the trial for the sexual charges, the opinion said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the improperly admitted evidence was removed, the evidence that Harris intentionally left his son in the car to die was \u201cfar from overwhelming,\u201d the opinion noted.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three justices joined in a partial dissent written by Justice Charlie Bethel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evidence about Harris\u2019 sexual activities was admissible because the state had to prove those obsessions were strong enough to make him want to kill Cooper by leaving him in a hot car, Bethel contended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harris was initially sentenced life in prison without parole for the death of Cooper and twelve years\u2019 additional time in prison for the sexual crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the charges related to Cooper\u2019s death have been overturned, the state will have to decide whether to retry Harris on those charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though the crimes took place in Cobb County, the trial was held in Glynn County in 2016 due to difficulty finding impartial jurors in Cobb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n[mailerlite_form form_id=2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Justin Ross Harris for murder and cruelty charges related to the death of his young son, Cooper, in a hot car in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8486,9219,9217],"class_list":["post-37294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cobb-county","tag-hot-car-death","tag-justin-ross-harris","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}