COBB COUNTY, Ga. (Court TV/AP) — A Georgia man once convicted in his toddler son’s hot car death has been released from jail after completing his sentence.
Justin Ross Harris was released from the Cobb County Jail on June 16, 2025, according to online records. Harris was at the county jail to serve the remainder of his sentence connected to sex crimes.
FILE – Justin Ross Harris listens during his trial at the Glynn County Courthouse, Oct. 3, 2016, in Brunswick, Ga. (Stephen B. Morton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool, File)
In 2016, Harris was convicted of eight counts, including malice murder, for the death of 22-month-old Cooper Harris. A judge sentenced him to life without parole, as well as 32 more years in prison for other crimes.
Court TV Trial Archives: GA v. Justin Ross Harris (2020)
Cooper died after sitting for about seven hours in the back seat of a Hyundai Tucson SUV outside his father’s office in suburban Atlanta, where temperatures that day reached at least into the high 80s.
He told police that on the morning of June 18, 2014, he had forgotten to drop off Cooper at daycare. Instead, he drove straight to his job as a web developer for The Home Depot and left the child in his car seat, he told investigators.
At trial, prosecutors put forth a theory that Harris was miserable in his marriage and killed his son so he could be free. They presented evidence of his extramarital sexual activities, including exchanging sexually explicit messages and graphic photos with women and girls and meeting some of them for sex.
But the Georgia Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn his murder and child cruelty convictions in June 2022, saying the jury saw evidence that was “extremely and unfairly prejudicial.”
Though it dismissed the murder conviction, the state Supreme Court upheld Harris’ convictions on three sex crimes committed against a 16-year-old girl that Harris had not appealed.
Harris served prison time for a felony conviction — attempted sexual exploitation of a minor, which resulted in a 10-year prison sentence, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. He was moved to the Cobb County Jail on June 16, 2024, to serve the remaining one-year sentence for a pair of misdemeanors for distribution of obscene materials to minors, Cobb County jail records show. The county jail is in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, the same county where Cooper died.
