Harris jurors leave court to view SUV in which Cooper died

Jurors in the Ross Harris hot-car murder trial on Thursday viewed what prosecutors call “the murder weapon” — the SUV in which Harris’ 22-month-old son died after being trapped inside for seven hours.

The SUV, which had Cooper’s car seat strapped inside, was placed in the parking lot of the Glynn County courthouse. Previously, Judge Mary Staley Clark, over the defense’s objection, granted the prosecution’s unusual request to let jurors view Harris’ 2011 Hyundai Tucson.

Meanwhile, prosecutors told Staley Clark that they expect to rest their case on Friday. With an interruption by Hurricane Matthew, the prosecution has been presenting its case since Oct. 3. When the state rests, Harris’s team will then begin its defense, which has been estimated to take a week or two.

With the judge overseeing the parking lot proceeding Thursday morning, and with a court reporter seated nearby, the jurors were allowed to walk twice around the SUV. Then a deputy opened the driver’s side door and the jurors walked around the car another two times. After that, they were given five minutes to look at the car from any angle, although they were prohibited from sitting inside or touching the vehicle.

Harris did not attend the viewing. Earlier this week, he waived his right to be present.

Some of the jurors walked up to the SUV just as Harris could be seen doing so on surveillance video on June 18, 2014, the day of Cooper’s death. A few jurors stuck their heads inside the SUV and looked around. On male juror walked up and acted as if he were tossing something inside the SUV, just as Harris tossed light bulbs into the car after a lunchtime visit to a Home Depot store that day.

When Harris briefly opened the door that day and tossed the package of light bulbs inside, his head remained above the roof line of the car. That meant, while he did this, he had no clear view to see his son inside the SUV.

Harris stands 6-foot-2, while most of the jurors are much shorter. That became an issue to Harris’ defense team after they returned to the courtroom.

Lead defense attorney Maddox Kilgore called the viewing exercise “an absolute disaster” and asked Staley Clark to grant his motion for a mistrial.

“We have jurors of all different heights on this jury,” Kilgore said. “I’m 5-foot-5 and there are jurors even shorter than I am.”

Their views inside the SUV would have been completely different from Harris’s, Kilgore said. “Their view, merely standing in the frame, would have been substantially different.”

Lead prosecutor Chuck Boring asked Staley Clark to deny the motion.

“This is the murder weapon for this case,” the prosecutor said. “They were examining a vital piece of evidence.”

Staley Clark agreed.

“The vehicle is evidence in this case,” Staley Clark said. “The vehicle is too large to bring into their jury room. … The jury has a right to look at every piece of evidence.”

An argument could be made, she said, that jurors should have been allowed to “open and close the doors themselves and go into the vehicle themselves.” The limitations imposed on the jury may have been “too restrictive, not too generous,” the judge said.

Also Thursday, jurors heard from yet another woman with whom Harris exchanged sexually explicit emails on the day of Cooper’s death.