Jury selection in the Ross Harris hot-car murder trial has been grueling, but it's also on track to be finished by the end of this week, Cobb County court administrator Tom Charron said Monday.
"We're looking real good," Charron, who's been at the Glynn County courthouse throughout jury selection, said during a courtroom recess. "Right now it looks like we're right on schedule and I think all the parties are happy where we are."
If enough jurors can be declared eligible to be in the final jury pool by Friday, then opening statements and initial testimony in the case can begin Oct. 3, he said. There will be no court the final week of September.
Charron knows quite a bit about high-profile cases. He once prosecuted a number of them when he served as Cobb’s district attorney. He noted that jurors in Brunswick are of a different mindset about the case than those who showed up for jury selection in Marietta.
“When they got into the individual questioning … it was clear that most of those jurors had really just read a story about it or heard something about the case,” Charron said of the prospective jurors here.
“The nature of the information that the jurors here in Glynn County have is very limited as opposed to what we all witnessed in Cobb County,” he added. “Where the jurors in Cobb County had been subjected to, really two constant years of almost day-by-day information about the case and the status of the case as it went along through the motions process. … I think down here the jurors’ knowledge is very limited to what few stories they heard when the case first came here and maybe what they’ve picked up since you’ve been here.”
On Monday, Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark brought in a second panel of 36 prospective jurors. More than half — 21 — said they had formed and expressed opinions about Harris’ guilt or innocence. And all but one had already heard about the case in the news media.
Last week, 23 prospective jurors made it to the final pool. If Staley Clark opts for four alternate jurors to serve with the 12 main jurors, 42 prospective jurors will be needed.
“We’re hoping for a like number this week, which will put us at 46, maybe getting up to as much as 50,” Charron said. “So right now we’re still on track.”
Charron said the court is hoping to get more in the final pool than the minimum of 42 in case something comes up and affects a juror’s ability to attend the trial. “What you want to avoid is having to bring some other jurors in, get them re-qualified and then spend another day for jury selection,” he said.
Harris faces charges of malice murder and felony murder for the death of his 22-month-old son Cooper in June 2014, when he left the child in his hot car for hours while at work. Harris’ lead defense attorney, Maddox Kilgore, has called the incident a “horrible, gut-wrenching accident.”
Harris is the subject of the second season of the AJC's podcast series "Breakdown," which will follow the trial's developments.
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