Jury in Ross Harris trial reviews video of his interview with police
» New episode of 'Breakdown' podcast
BRUNSWICK — The jurors in the Justin Ross Harris murder case this morning reviewed the video of Harris's interview with Cobb police on the night Harris's son died.
The interview, with Det. Phil Stoddard at Cobb police headquarters, came just a few hours after Harris pulled the body of his son, Cooper, from his SUV. The prosecution has asserted that Harris’s behavior at the scene and then later at police headquarters was suspicious.
(Harris is facing many decades in prison.)
Harris seemed to switch from anguish to calm and back again — to the point that detectives said his weeping and outcries didn’t seem genuine. The defense ridiculed those statements at trial.
“Everything Ross said was suspicious. Everything he didn’t say was suspicious. Everything he did was suspicious. Everything he didn’t do was suspicious,” said lead defense attorney Maddox Kilgore during his closing argument.
The prosecution quoted an officer at the scene who described Harris as acting like “Will Farrell. Yelling a lot then he’s calm and looking around. That’s what we saw in that interview room,” said lead prosecutor Chuck Boring.
Harris is charged with eight counts, including three separate counts of murder, in the June 2014 death of Cooper, who was 22 months old.
The jury began its work under a daunting pile of paper on Tuesday: the lengthy charge from the judge instructing them on the law in this long and complicated case, and roughly 1,150 exhibits of evidence: 950 of those came from the prosecution and 200 from the defense.
Jurors on Tuesday asked Judge Mary Staley Clark for the transcript of Stoddard’s interview with Harris; she would not supply the transcript but said the jury could watch the video of the interview this morning.
About the Authors
Bill Rankin has been an AJC reporter for more than 30 years. His father, Jim Rankin, worked as an editor for the newspaper for 26 years, retiring in 1986. Bill has primarily covered the state’s court system, doing all he can do to keep the scales of justice on an even keel. Since 2015, he has been the host of the newspaper’s Breakdown podcast.
A native Atlantan, Boone joined the AJC staff in 2007. He quickly carved out a niche covering crime stories, assuming the public safety beat in 2014. He's covered some of the biggest trials this decade, from Hemy Neuman to Ross Harris to Chip Olsen, the latter of which was featured on Season 7 of the AJC's award-winning "Breakdown" podcast.
