Justin Ross Harris freed from prison in 2014 hot car death but still behind bars

Justin Ross Harris, the man accused of leaving his 22-month-old son Cooper to die in his hot SUV a decade ago, has been released from the state prison system and transferred to the Cobb County jail, where he could spend the remaining two years of his sentence.

He was transferred from state prison to the county jail on Father’s Day.

When the Georgia Supreme Court overturned Harris’ murder conviction two years ago, it upheld three convictions against him for exchanging graphic text messages to an underage girl.

One of those convictions was a felony – attempted sexual exploitation of a minor, for which Harris was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The other two were misdemeanors, each of which resulted in a 1-year sentence in custody.

Because Judge Mary Staley Clark made all three sentences consecutive, Harris had 12 years to serve in custody for those convictions.

Harris’ trial attorneys, Maddox Kilgore and Carlos Rodriguez, declined to comment.

During the highly publicized case that saw his murder conviction overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court, Harris, who moved from Tuscaloosa to the Atlanta area in 2012 for work, was seen as a sympathetic dad before it was revealed he sent graphic photos to teenagers. He has maintained that the death of Cooper was a tragic accident.

Harris had been incarcerated since 2016 in Macon State Prison after being found guilty of exchanging graphic text messages with an underage girl.

In June 2022, Georgia’s high court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that Harris did not receive a fair trial because days of testimony detailing his extramarital sexual relationships should not have been allowed.

On June 18, 2014, Harris planned to drop Cooper off at daycare before his shift at Home Depot, officials said. The pair stopped to eat at Chick-Fil-A. but Harris later told police he forgot to drop Cooper off. He said he mistakenly left the child in the back seat of his SUV in the company parking lot and didn’t notice his dead son in his car seat until he was driving back from work.

Cooper died from heat stroke within hours, according to authorities.

Harris’ case drew an extraordinary amount of attention, making headlines around the world and sparking debates online and on cable news shows. After determining that pretrial publicity had made it too hard to find a fair jury in Cobb County in suburban Atlanta, the presiding judge agreed to relocate the trial to Brunswick on the Georgia coast.

Judge Mary Staley Clark sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But in June 2022, the Georgia Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that Harris did not receive a fair trial because testimony detailing his extramarital sexual relationships should not have been allowed.

The court still upheld convictions against Harris for exchanging graphic text messages to an underage girl, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He has been in custody since 2014.

“The state convincingly demonstrated that (Harris) was a philanderer, a pervert and even a sexual predator,” Chief Justice David Nahmias wrote. “This evidence did little if anything to answer the key question of (Harris’s) intent when he walked away from Cooper.”

Last June, the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office announced it would not retry Ross Harris for murder, citing the higher courts ruling that also limited evidence in the state’s case. In a statement, the DA’s office said it conducted a thorough review of the case file over the past 11 months. The decision was made by Cobb Superior Court Judge Robert Leonard.

“Crucial motive evidence that was admitted at the first trial in 2016 is no longer available to the state due to the majority decision of the Supreme Court,” it said. “Therefore, after much thought and deliberation, we have made the difficult decision to not retry Justin Ross Harris on the reversed counts of the indictment. … Cooper will always be remembered by this office and those who fought for him.”

Harris was also separately indicted in March 2016 for possessing lewd photographs of two underage girls, sending nude photos of himself to those girls and engaging in sexually explicit chats. But the DA’s office decided not to try Harris on those charges. A court document also signed by Leonard said the case was no longer being pursued “at the request, or due to the unavailability, of the alleged victim.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.