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Written by: E. George
Published June 18, 2024 @ 9:00 PM ET
COBB COUNTY, Ga. – Justin Ross Harris, the metro Atlanta man sentenced for leaving his 22-month-old infant, Cooper, in a hot car to die, was released from prison on Sunday, June 16, 2024, after serving nearly 10 years. He was transferred from Macon State Prison to Cobb County Jail to possibly serve his remaining two years.
A judge initially sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2016 after he was convicted on the eight counts concerning his son’s untimely death.
In 2022, he filed for appeals for his murder and first-degree child cruelty convictions. He and his attorneys claimed that the evidence was lacking and the trial focused too strongly on his sexual activities. The Georgia Supreme Court overturned the murder conviction.
Harris still spent time in Macon State Prison for the sex crimes from his initial conviction, including dissemination of harmful material to minors and criminal attempt to commit sexual exploitation of children. He received a sentence of 10 years for the sex crimes and became incarcerated on December 6, 2016.
On June 18, 2014, Harris failed to drop off his baby at daycare on his way to work at Home Depot. Instead, he left him in his car while he worked his shift on a day when the temperatures reached the 80s.
Harris discovered Cooper in the car seven hours later.
Harris blamed sleep deprivation for forgetting to drop him off and said the incident was an accident. Prosecutors, however, said Harris was involved in numerous extramarital affairs, had wished to have intercourse with as many women as possible, and wanted to end his marriage.
They argued that he was a “sexual deviant” who knowingly abandoned his son in his car so that he could spend time with females he met online, some of whom were teens. Reports indicated that Harris exchanged text messages that were sexual in nature with several females on the day of his son’s death. One of his text threads was with a 16-year-old girl.
The Supreme Court deemed the information “needlessly cumulative and prejudicial” and that it should not have been included in the case. They also said that the evidence presented to prove that Harris intentionally and maliciously caused Cooper’s death was neither “compelling” nor “strong.”
A Cobb County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson later said that they would not retry Harris for his son’s murder. They stated, “After much thought and deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to not retry Justin Ross Harris on the reversed counts of the indictment.
Cooper will always be remembered by this office and those who fought for him.”