Judge Grants Change of Venue for Ross Harris

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What Stoddard said about RH’s searching/viewing about hot car death (summarized):


(Justin Ross Harris-Probable Cause Hearing, Part 1, YouTube, Croaker Queen, from approx. 53:00-57:00).


Stoddard: RH said he had a fear of hot car deaths. That he had watched a TV program featuring a “Turn Around” advocate who had lost a child in a hot car death, “just like me.” (No date given for when RH watched this program). RH said he was familiar with this precaution and practiced it (Stoddard adds, but not on that day).

State- did he watch any other videos about heat related deaths?

Stoddard-yes, 2 in particular. He told me that during his time as a police dispatcher (for 5 years) a police canine had died within 10 minutes after being trapped in a hot car.

Stoddard seems to connect that story to what he says next- that RH watched a video about the heat related deaths of animals left in cars. Stoddard doesn’t specify when RH watched this video.

Stoddard then says, in essence, “about that video…” He says RH viewed the video on his WORK computer (or was it another video, since Stoddard first claimed there were TWO videos?).

Stoddard said the video was by a veterinarian Ernie Ford, who went into great detail and gave a demonstration about how much animals left in hot cars suffer. Stoddard emphasizes that suffering in his description of the video.

The prosecutor asks- did RH watch the video more than once?

Stoddard-yes. “The last time he watched it was on June 13, 2014,” five days before Cooper’s death. (Unclear when RH watched it the first time, or why the State connected the video with RH’s previous job, but also said the video was watched twice on RH’s work computer (singular; his work computer at Home Depot, presumably, where he watched it at least one time, on June 13? ).
 
Hope4More said:
Consensus among attorneys seems to be the COV to a rural county favors the State, especially if the DT's strategy is to go after LE.

Staley's CA Tom Cherron says her preference would be to begin trial after Labor Day, and to have it completed wrapped up before Thanksgiving.
Click to expand...

Makes sense. No judge likes to start a trial during the summer months, as most like to take time off during the summer too, as well as potential jurors.
 
I'm watching the full probable cause hearing (for the first time), with a view towards getting a sense of the case the DT might put on.

Here's one big piece of it, IMO: the DT suggests it can prove with debit card receipts that RH frequently went to CF for a drive- through breakfast, by himself, and that his routine was to go there AFTER dropping Cooper off at daycare. That's pretty major, since it provides, theoretically, a reasonable doubt scenario that Cooper still with him after CF was not routine, making forgetting Cooper more plausible.

Add to that--LeAnne has said Cooper slept between RH and herself in their bed the night before, because he had not slept well the previous two nights. Stoddard said the CF video shows Cooper awake and lively going into the car after eating. My own experience with my DS tells me it is entirely possible for a child that young or even years older to appear to be extremely active, then to be sound asleep within yes, even a minute or two of being in a car. For my son, hyper activity was actually very often an indication of exhaustion.
 
About the searches for "how people die," (Stoddard said that was not an exact title) and "how to survive in prison."

My guess is that the DT will link those searches with RH's search of the term "age of consent" to argue RH was depressed about being denied a promotion at HD and by being turned down for a position with CF, and that he knew he was doing wrong by sexting with a 17 year old and with other women, but that those searches reflected his depression & self-blame, and had nothing whatsoever to do with not wanting Cooper.

(Caveat--that argument would only be persuasive if the computer forensics evidence shows these searches were made on either on the same day or over a very short period of time. Also matters how long RH was texting with the minor. Stoddard said from the time she was 16 to age 17, but--that could be literally just for a few days if texting began right before her birthday. Has it even been "proven" that RH knew she was a minor when they first began texting? If not, maybe he had just found that out and the searches were a result ).
 
Hope4More said:
I'm watching the full probable cause hearing (for the first time), with a view towards getting a sense of the case the DT might put on.

Here's one big piece of it, IMO: the DT suggests it can prove with debit card receipts that RH frequently went to CF for a drive- through breakfast, by himself, and that his routine was to go there AFTER dropping Cooper off at daycare. That's pretty major, since it provides, theoretically, a reasonable doubt scenario that Cooper still with him after CF was not routine, making forgetting Cooper more plausible.

Add to that--LeAnne has said Cooper slept between RH and herself in their bed the night before, because he had not slept well the previous two nights. Stoddard said the CF video shows Cooper awake and lively going into the car after eating. My own experience with my DS tells me it is entirely possible for a child that young or even years older to appear to be extremely active, then to be sound asleep within yes, even a minute or two of being in a car. For my son, hyper activity was actually very often an indication of exhaustion.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for all of the information that you have shared this morning.

The DT's position that Ross went to CFA multiple times a month after dropping off Cooper doesn't make me change my mind in the slightest. On the mornings where JRH went to CFA after dropping off Cooper, he used the drive-thru. On this particular morning he went inside and then proceeded to buckle Copper into his car seat. That is a break in his "routine" a mere seconds before needing to choose the proper turn lane.

Was it Ross's habit and routine to interact with women on Whisper while in the drive-thru line?

I am more interested in seeing what the DT puts up that contradicts what LE has said publicly and in the probable cause hearing. The DT has outright denied some of Det. Staddard's claims. I am wondering if this is case where Det. Stoddard has been loose with words (i.e. he searched for "child-free life" when in reality he clicked on a link to take him to a child-free forum) or if facts have been materially misrepresented (i.e. he put his head in the car where he could clearly see Cooper when he didn't).
 
I've been thinking about how the judge says they might end up in a county w/ no AC in their courtroom...I wonder if the judge is the type of person who thinks anywhere outside of the city and suburbs is backwoods...I know a lot of people like that. Judge Staley also says they need to move to a county that can handle them...That doesn't seem to go w/ a county that doesn't have AC in the courthouse.
 
I'm watching a podcast about jury selection. It was mentioned that when the defense and the prosecution had their talk about the change of venue, the defense said that if the prosecution agreed to strike 6 jurors from the qualified pool, they would drop the change of venue...The prosecution said they wouldn't, so the judge decided to move the trial.
 
GA_Peach said:
Thank you so much for all of the information that you have shared this morning.

The DT's position that Ross went to CFA multiple times a month after dropping off Cooper doesn't make me change my mind in the slightest. On the mornings where JRH went to CFA after dropping off Cooper, he used the drive-thru. On this particular morning he went inside and then proceeded to buckle Copper into his car seat. That is a break in his "routine" a mere seconds before needing to choose the proper turn lane.

Was it Ross's habit and routine to interact with women on Whisper while in the drive-thru line?

I am more interested in seeing what the DT puts up that contradicts what LE has said publicly and in the probable cause hearing. The DT has outright denied some of Det. Staddard's claims. I am wondering if this is case where Det. Stoddard has been loose with words (i.e. he searched for "child-free life" when in reality he clicked on a link to take him to a child-free forum) or if facts have been materially misrepresented (i.e. he put his head in the car where he could clearly see Cooper when he didn't).
Click to expand...



I’m interested as well in seeing what was said in the probable cause hearing that the DT says is untrue, beginning with the latest claim that RH did not do searches for hot car deaths, hence the post from the hearing about just that .

As for whether or not taking Cooper inside was enough of a break in routine to argue against the possibility of "forgetting” him very shortly afterwards. The jury will be asked to look at the totality of the evidence, and the DT’s job is to raise reasonable doubt. IMO it matters that the DT may be able to argue, persuasively or not, that RH’s routine was to have dropped Cooper off before CF.

At the moment, I’m putting my own opinions aside and am going through and summarizing the PC hearing from a defense point of view, to see what kind of case they might make.

(Another relevant tidbit, for example. Looks like the DT might say that the reason why RH cursed at LE on the scene is because, after he tried to reach LeAnne and Cooper’s daycare by phone, he was trying to make his way back to Cooper, and the LE officer on the scene was standing in his way/blocking him from doing so.

I’m still watching and don’t know what is on the video of RH sitting, handcuffed, in the back of a patrol car. I actually find the DT’s observation meaningful, though, that RH was only 100 feet away from and could see Cooper’s lifeless body as he was trapped in that backseat for what seems to have been up to 30 minutes. If Cooper’s death was accidental, I can’t imagine how it would felt to RH to have been prevented from being with his son.


ETA-- the ACJ has viewed the HD parking lot video. Their take was that RH did NOT put his head inside the car when he threw the lightbulbs in, and that counter to what Stoodard testified to at the PC hearing, RH did NOT seem to be at all aware of or concerned by folks passing near him in the parking lot after lunch. I imagine the jury will be shown the video and will decide for themselves on each point.
 
eileenhawkeye said:
I'm watching a podcast about jury selection. It was mentioned that when the defense and the prosecution had their talk about the change of venue, the defense said that if the prosecution agreed to strike 6 jurors from the qualified pool, they would drop the change of venue...The prosecution said they wouldn't, so the judge decided to move the trial.
Click to expand...



There's a link upthread to Wild's livestream that covered this. Staley told the sides to try to reach an agreement about contested jurors, which must have boiled down to those 6.. She checked on their progress after about 1 1/2 hours. The State and DT told her the same thing--that the State was willing to compromise on 2 of the 6, but that the DT held firm on all 6.

Staley acknowledged that neither side was in the position to reach a compromise--the DT would have lost an issue for appeal and not gained an unbiased jury, and the State would have been forced to agree to a jury it didn't have to accept. Staley also made it clear she wouldn't have been able to accept an agreement by the sides even had they been able to work one out. In her (very reluctant ) opinion, the jury pool was deeply and irreversibly tainted. It was just flat out impossible for RH to receive a fair trial in Cobb County, given the pervasive pre-trial publicity, and the jury pool's consumption of that publicity.
 
Hope4More said:
I’m interested as well in seeing what was said in the probable cause hearing that the DT says is untrue, beginning with the latest claim that RH did not do searches for hot car deaths, hence the post from the hearing about just that .

As for whether or not taking Cooper inside was enough of a break in routine to argue against the possibility of "forgetting” him very shortly afterwards. The jury will be asked to look at the totality of the evidence, and the DT’s job is to raise reasonable doubt. IMO it matters that the DT may be able to argue, persuasively or not, that RH’s routine was to have dropped Cooper off before CF.

At the moment, I’m putting my own opinions aside and am going through and summarizing the PC hearing from a defense point of view, to see what kind of case they might make.

(Another relevant tidbit, for example. Looks like the DT might say that the reason why RH cursed at LE on the scene is because, after he tried to reach LeAnne and Cooper’s daycare by phone, he was trying to make his way back to Cooper, and the LE officer on the scene was standing in his way/blocking him from doing so.

I’m still watching and don’t know what is on the video of RH sitting, handcuffed, in the back of a patrol car. I actually find the DT’s observation meaningful, though, that RH was only 100 feet away from and could see Cooper’s lifeless body as he was trapped in that backseat for what seems to have been up to 30 minutes. If Cooper’s death was accidental, I can’t imagine how it would felt to RH to have been prevented from being with his son.


ETA-- the ACJ has viewed the HD parking lot video. Their take was that RH did NOT put his head inside the car when he threw the lightbulbs in, and that counter to what Stoodard testified to at the PC hearing, RH did NOT seem to be at all aware of or concerned by folks passing near him in the parking lot after lunch. I imagine the jury will be shown the video and will decide for themselves on each point.
Click to expand...

I feel very much the same way in most respects. I had not heard the point about JRH being blocked when he tired to make his way back to Cooper. Very interesting.

Your "ETA" comment has been fairly well publicized here in Atlanta. It's one of the main reasons why I am so curious to see what the DT has to say about much of what has been circulated in the press.

I pray that justice for Cooper is not compromised in any way by LE's statements. I have this nagging thought that some of their inattentiveness is really going to come back and bite them. My hunch is that LE felt something was very bizarre about this situation from the moment that they arrived at the scene, and I pray that they did not allow this to taint their investigation. For the sake of all involved I hope that JRH's actions have not been completely misrepresented.

With respect to the totality of the evidence, there is one point that I cannot overlook. If JRH was sexting/using the Whisper app at breakfast and returned to that same behavior within minutes of returning to the office, I cannot classify his actions as anything other than criminal negligence. He allowed himself to be distracted to the point of neglecting to take Cooper to daycare, and that resulted in Cooper's death. JRH had a responsibility to put Cooper into someone else's care, and he failed to do that. Intentionally engaging in distracting behavior is not the same thing as forgetting. The suspicious web activity, sexting with others (to the extent that it did not cause his distraction), his unsatisfactory marriage, and the strange remarks made by both JRH and LH are supporting details IMO. Unless the DT is able to refute JRH's Whisper communications at breakfast and his subsequent texting activity at work, I am going to be hard-pressed to believe that JRH wasn't at the very least negligent.
 
eileenhawkeye said:
I've been thinking about how the judge says they might end up in a county w/ no AC in their courtroom...I wonder if the judge is the type of person who thinks anywhere outside of the city and suburbs is backwoods...I know a lot of people like that. Judge Staley also says they need to move to a county that can handle them...That doesn't seem to go w/ a county that doesn't have AC in the courthouse.
Click to expand...

The statement the Judge made about the AC makes little sense to me. I just can't imagine what counties In Georgia have no AC in their courtrooms. It would have to be somewhere way out in the boonies. :waitasec:
 
magnolia said:
The statement the Judge made about the AC makes little sense to me. I just can't imagine what counties In Georgia have no AC in their courtrooms. It would have to be somewhere way out in the boonies. :waitasec:
Click to expand...

Are we sure she didn't say AV? (audio/visual-- maybe she knows their technology is not as up to date as the case would require?)
 
I read the defense's motion for the change of venue. They said that there were 85 jurors who were questioned about the case, and of those 85, they determined that 43 could not be impartial. That's about half. So I don't think finding an impartial jury in Cobb would've been impossible but I don't have a problem with them moving the trial. I would even argue that w/ all the hype and attention this case has gotten, the fact that half of the jurors in the same county can be impartial (and you know the defense is trying to get as much numbers of their side as possible), is relatively surprising.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/311224797/Harris-Motion-Doc-1
 
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