GA Father Who Left His Son In A Hot Car To Die Wants A New Trial

COBB COUNTY, GA — The legal team for Justin Ross-Harris is preparing to argue that the convicted murderer of 22-month-old Cooper Harris — who died in the backseat of Harris' SUV on June 18, 2014 — deserves a new trial. Harris' attorneys argue that his jury should never have been presented details of his marital infidelities or given evidence that he was sexting a 16-year-old girl during the hours his son was dying.

Harris' trial, held in Brunswick in 2016, became an infamous example of a "hot car death," in which a fatal combination of memory failure, sleep deprivation and distraction lead a parent to forget about a young child in the backseat of a hot car.

But this was not the case in the death of Cooper Harris. Prosecutors argued that the father's online search history showed he had planned the killing in order to gain a "child-free lifestyle." During the seven hours the toddler spent dying, Harris was on his phone, texting six different women and sending a picture of his penis to a teen girl.

Harris was eventually indicted on two counts of sexual exploitation of children and six counts of disseminating harmful material to minors, but those charges were dropped after his legal team filed a motion for a new trial in 2017. Harris was convicted at trial for murder and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

However, it's worth noting that sexual exploitation charges haven't entirely disappeared: Judge Mary Staley Clark, who presided over Harris' criminal trial, signed an order placing the sex crime charges in an "administrative dead docket" that effectively preserves the charges for future use. The Marietta Daily Journal reports the order included the provision, "If Harris’ conviction and/or sentence in the murder case is modified or reversed, the state will reactivate his sexual exploitation indictment."

But Harris' infidelity and alleged sex crimes didn't have anything to do with his son's death, his lawyers argued. The motion maintained that prosecutors failed to disprove Harris' claim that his son's death was simply a tragic accident. It also argued the trial court failed to block evidence that unfairly focused on his infidelities and character, and that prosecutors and witnesses "made no connection whatsoever between these specific acts of infidelity and an intent to murder his child."

Prosecutors argued that evidence of Harris' infidelities showed motive for his murder plot.

Harris' motion hearing is scheduled for December 14, 15 and 16 in Cobb Superior Court.