On June 18th of 2014, Justin Ross Harris put his 22-month old son Cooper in the car seat of his SUV like he did on many other days. As part of this routine, Harris would drop his boy off at daycare before heading to work as a web developer at a Home Depot corporate office in Georgia. But on this day, he drove straight to work and left his son in the car for seven hours, where he died due to heat exposure. Now Harris has been sentenced for his crime, receiving life without parole plus 32 years.
The Harris defense team had argued that Justin was a loving father that simply forgot his son was in the car, and that the whole thing was a tragic accident. But during the trial, the prosecution revealed Harris had a double life with multiple affairs on the go, including one with an underage girl. They found numerous references in messages to these women about leaving his life and needing an escape. Most damning of all, they found web searches that seemed to indicate Harris had researched hot car deaths leading up to the incident.
A jury found Justin Ross Harris guilty of malice murder and seven other charges in November. Now a judge has handed down a life sentence along with the maximum additional sentence allowable of 32 years. It’s the sad ending to a terrible story, one that only gets more vile the closer you look at it.