In June 2014, Justin Ross Harris failed to take his 22-month old son, Cooper, to day care and instead left him inside the family’s Hyundai Tucson while he went to work.
Five minutes after returning to his car at 4:15 pm that day, Harris pulled over to find his son in his rear-facing car seat and attempted CPR. Two hours later, Cooper was pronounced dead.
Throughout the two-year long trial, Harris’s defense team blamed Cooper’s death on a simple memory lapse. Prosecutors meanwhile said Harris was an adulterer who “loved himself and his other obsessions more than that little boy”, according to the Washington Post.
Ultimately, the jury sided with the prosecutors and found Harris guilty on all eight charges against him. Harris has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 32 years.
Discussing the sentence, Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark said: “Except for the fact that the defendant has no prior criminal record, there is no mitigating fact or circumstance in this case. This court finds particularly that the defendant intentionally and unnecessarily in a wanton manner, caused and inflicted upon Cooper Harris unnecessary and wanton severe physical and mental pain and agony.”