Last weekend, Ross Harris met in jail with his team of lawyers to discuss whether he would take the stand in his own defense. It wasn’t the first time they’ve had that conversation, or the last.
They had it again late Friday morning — a 10-minute conference in which Harris finally reached a decision. He told Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley he was waiving his right to testify. After one prosecution rebuttal witness, the evidence part of the hot car murder trial was complete.
Seventy witnesses testified over 21 days in the trial, which began with jury selection on Sept. 12. It’s arguable how much clarity those dozens of experts, friends, co-workers, detectives and others provided on a case built largely on circumstantial evidence.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday. Jurors will then have to decide whether Harris intentionally left his 22-month-old son Cooper strapped in his car seat for seven hours. Even if they vote to acquit on malice murder, Harris still faces the possibility of life in prison for negligence resulting in his son’s death.
Harris’ decision not to take the stand was a wise one, said Atlanta defense attorney Steve Sadow, especially when considering personality traits attributed to him by friends and family. Harris likes to be the center of attention, they said, is prone to exaggerate and is something of a know-it-all.
“If that’s true you don’t put him anywhere near the stand,” he said.
The state may wish it had not called a rebuttal witness, the last to testify.
Cobb County police Det. Edward Stockinger told jurors that Leanna Taylor, Harris’ former wife and Cooper’s mother, showed no emotion when he told about her only child’s death. He’s not the first investigator to point this out even though other witnesses seemed to contradict it.
A recorded interview played for the court didn’t seem to support Stockinger’s certainty.
Taylor sounds as if she was in shock, her voice breaking with emotion.
“Cooper is not with us anymore,” Taylor can be heard telling her mother. “Ross forgot to drop him off at daycare and he was left in the car.”
Stockinger said he heard a hysterical reaction from Cooper’s grandmother mother on the other end of the call. She apparently asked her daughter why she was not as emotional.
“I’m not processing this right now,” Taylor told her mom. “That’s why I don’t have a reaction. I don’t know what my reaction will be.”
Taylor, once considered a suspect by Cobb police, was never charged in her son’s death. She spoke about her state of mind, and her ex-husband’s culpability, in testimony earlier this week.
Harris, she said, was a good father who would’ve never intentionally harmed his son. But she had little regard for him otherwise.
Under cross-examination, Stockinger refused to acknowledge Taylor was even slightly emotional during the interview.
Lead defense attorney Maddox Kilgore told him that Taylor could be heard whispering, sighing and sniffling during the interview.
“She was actually quite emotional when she was talking to you?” Kilgore asked.
“No, she was not,” Stockinger said. “I can tell you 100 percent she was not emotional.”
Expect the defense to revisit his testimony on Monday, using it to support its claim of a rush to judgment by law enforcement.
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