Toddler's Hot Car Death

apprenticeprof
Tue, 06 Dec 2016 02:08:00 +0000

I followed the trial, and I’m uncomfortable with the verdict and sentence.

I went into this assuming Harris was guilty, and I still find it very hard to believe that a father was able to forget his son in the course of a two minute drive. I also find the fact that Harris had apparently watched a video about leaving kids in hot cars not long before Cooper’s death a highly suspicious coincidence.

But other evidence that seemed damning at first was revealed, at the trial, to be reaching on the part of prosecution – Ross Harris had not, for instance, visited childfree websites, but had rather once clicked on a link from another article that redirected to one. I didn’t watch the interrogation videos, but from what I did hear, he was not emotionless after his arrest, and grief is complicated enough that I’m not prepared to analyze whether or not he seemed sincere. Some witnesses claimed there was an unmistakable smell emanating from his car, which means he should have known something was wrong as soon as he got in, rather than driving for a few minutes first, but other witnesses say they didn’t smell anything at the scene.

More than that, there simply didn’t seem to be anything to establish motive. Yes, he was compulsively sexting with multiple women, meeting some of them for in-person affairs, but none of these relationships seemed particularly serious, and whenever he mentioned Cooper it was to talk about how much he loved him. By all accounts, he seems to have been an involved, at least superficially devoted father. He was in the process of planning a family cruise just before Cooper’s death. He wasn’t in financial straits, or on the brink of divorce.

I do think he was rightly convicted of negligence – although even there, I wonder how our reactions would be different if he were distracted because he was listening to music and anxious about an impending deadline at work, rather than because he was sexting underage girls. For the purposes of a murder charge, however, the reason for the distraction shouldn’t matter.

Terribly sad case, regardless of whether or not the right verdict was reached.