A Cobb County judge on Friday ruled that jurors in the Ross Harris murder trial can see the actual SUV in which Harris’ 22-month-old son died after being left seven hours in stifling heat.
Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark said Harris' Hyundai Tucson can be transported to Brunswick where jury selection is to begin Sept. 12. She granted the unusual request by Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring, who argued the jury should be allowed to get "a look at the murder weapon."
In one murder count, prosecutors accuse Harris of intentionally leaving Cooper to die in his hot car on June 18, 2014. Harris’ lawyers contend Harris left Cooper in the car by accident.
The trial is being held more than 300 miles away from Marietta because Staley Clark ruled this spring that Harris could not get a fair and impartial jury in Cobb.
During Friday’s hearing, it was disclosed that psychologist and memory expert David Diamond has interviewed Harris and believes he did not intentionally leave Cooper in the SUV. Diamond, who will be called as a defense witness at trial, has coined the term “Forgotten Baby Syndrome.”
Even though Diamond believes Harris did not intentionally leave Cooper in his car, he will not be able to give that opinion to the jury. Staley Clark ruled that such testimony is not allowed.
Both Boring and Maddox Kilgore, Harris’ lead defense attorney, agreed that is impermissible because that “ultimate question” must be decided by the jury.
Kilgore said he still plans to call on Diamond to testify that Cooper died as “the result of a failure of (Harris’) memory system.”
Harris stands accused of both malice murder, which gives jurors the option of finding he intentionally left Cooper in his hot car, and felony murder, which would allow jurors to find Harris guilty of criminal negligence.
Staley Clark also considered a defense motion to bar the prosecution from showing the jury animated three-dimensional videos. The computerized videos were assembled by a laser scan of the office parking lot where Cooper was left to die and the strip mall Harris pulled into when he said he first realized he’d left his son in his hot car.
The animated video shows Harris’ SUV from different angles, including some sequences where the SUV does not have a roof or windows. This allows the viewer to clearly see a depiction of Cooper sitting in his rear-facing car seat.
The only purpose for the video is so jurors will have fixed in their minds that Harris had to have been able to see Cooper in his car seat, Kilgore told Staley Clark. “It’s highly prejudicial, and it’s misleading.”
But Boring said the video will help jurors see the “spacial proximity” of the alleged crime scene. “This is not a reenactment video,” he said.
Staley Clark deferred her ruling, saying the issue was “worthy of reflection.”
Also Friday, Phil Stoddard, the lead detective in the case, appeared to correct misleading testimony he gave during a probable cause hearing held two weeks after Cooper’s death. This involved his description of what happened after Harris and co-workers left work for lunch the day of Cooper’s death and stopped at a nearby Home Depot so Harris could buy some light bulbs.
At the prior hearing, Stoddard correctly testified that after Harris’ friends dropped him off, Harris opened his driver’s door and tossed the light bulbs inside his SUV.
But Stoddard also testified that Harris was “all the way inside the frame. … He’s in there. He has a clear view.” This gave the impression that Harris must have known at the time that his dead son was inside the car.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported that Stoddard's testimony was incorrect. Security video of the parking lot that day showed Harris could not have looked inside the SUV because his eyes remained above the roof line.
On Friday, Stoddard got it right. When Harris tossed the light bulbs inside, the detective testified, “his head was above the car.”
About the Author
