Perhaps it’s time for the prosecution to rest when it starts throwing around technical legal terms like “nanny nanny boo boo.”
Or perhaps it's just coincidence that the state plans to rest its case today in the Justin Ross Harris murder trial — the day after lead prosecutor Chuck Boring invoked the nanny nanny boo boo doctrine during an argument over a defense motion for a mistrial.
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore objected strenuously to the jury’s visit to the courthouse parking lot yesterday to view Harris’s Hyundai Tucson — the vehicle in which Harris left his 22-month-old son, Cooper, to die in the heat of a June day in 2014. Kilgore called the viewing an “absolute disaster” that would deny Harris a fair trial and then moved for a mistrial.
Boring wasn’t buying. He asserted that the defense showed little interest Wednesday in helping to set the ground rules for the viewing process. And he objected just as strenuously to the motion for a mistrial.
“Judge, I think it was handled completely appropriately and professionally,” Boring said. “And now the defense is trying to engineer error by nanny nanny boo boo we don’t want to participate and give any suggestions, but now that it’s happened we’re going to ask for a mistrial. So we would object and ask you deny the motion.”
Which the judge did.
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The AJC's reporters in Brunswick will report throughout the day on key developments in the trial, and you'll also be able to follow our minute-by-minute account of the proceedings from the time court convenes in the morning until it recesses in the afternoon. AJC reporters Christian Boone (@reporterJCB) and Bill Rankin (@ajccourts) are in Brunswick for the duration of the trial.
Harris is also the subject of the second season of the AJC's podcast series "Breakdown," which is following the trial's developments.
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