Tens of thousands of additional Cobb tax dollars will be spent on the trial of Justin Ross Harris, accused of leaving his toddler son in a hot car to die, after the case was moved to Glynn County in an effort to escape the influence of media coverage on jurors.
Earlier this week, the Cobb Board of Commissioners voted to spend up to $200,000 from the Death Penalty Contingency Fund on relocation costs, since there are no death penalty cases scheduled for this year.
“There’s no question it’s a costly endeavor, but there’s a little something called the Constitution and you certainly don’t want to skimp and then have to do it all over again,” Cobb Superior Court Administrator Tom Charron said. Charron said he hoped the $200,000 from the Death Penalty fund would be enough, but declined to estimate the total cost to the county.
The trial is scheduled to begin September 12 at the Glynn County Superior Court in Brunswick.
Jurors will be selected from Glynn County, but Cobb will have to foot the bill to house lawyers for both sides as well as the judge, bailiffs, court reporters and other court staff—12 to 15 people total—for up to two months, Charron said.
“Obviously the biggest cost is going to be the housing of court personnel,” Charron said. “The other costs are fixed costs that we would incur if we tried it here, salaries and juror fees, things of that nature … we’re trying to keep it as lean as we can.”
Harris was arrested on June 18, 2014, just hours after allegedly finding his son, 22-month-old Cooper, unresponsive in his SUV, which Harris had left parked outside the Home Depot corporate office in Cobb County where he worked. Harris faces a number of charges, including murder and sexual exploitation of children for allegedly sending explicit text messages to minors. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In May, Harris' lawyers successfully filed to have the trial moved when the prosecution and defense were unable to strike an agreement over jury selection, with many potential jurors indicating that they had already formed an opinion of Harris' guilt based on the wall-to-wall coverage the case received. Some potential jurors called Harris a "pervert" and said he deserved to "rot in Hell."
Charron said the court had to look some 300 miles away from Atlanta, to Glynn County near the Florida border, to find a place where Harris’ name barely rung a bell. He said the aborted jury selection in Cobb cost the county $8,025.
“We needed to move it outside the Atlanta media market that covered this case so extensively,” he said. “As a matter of fact, talking to the court officials down there, several of them had to think a minute before [they said] ‘Oh yeah, I think I heard something about that case.’”
Attorney Jerry Word, director of the Georgia Capital Defender division of the Georgia Public Defender Council, said it would not be unheard of to use death penalty funds for a change of venue in a non-death penalty case.
“A lot of times the death penalty cases will get moved to another jurisdiction because they’re usually more high profile,” Word said. “This case is one of those cases that’s very high profile, similar to a death penalty case, it’s just they’re not seeking the death penalty.”
Buddy Tesar of the Cobb County Finance Department said the county may amend the death penalty fund in the next budget to include change of venue for other cases.
“It’s always good to have contingencies like that because as you know those [cases] can be rather expensive,” he said, adding that if the Harris trial runs over $200,000, “We would have to explore some options.”
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