<p>This all makes me feel sick. I don’t have children, but I just can’t imagine hating a TODDLER so much that you think, “let’s just kill him.” (if they indeed intentionally killed him, or one of them did, etc.) What could the toddler have possibly done to deserve such a horrible existence and death? </p>
<p>surfcity</p>
<p>It is strange that the wife asked the husband if he had said too much. And that the husband said I dreaded seeing what he would look like. so they may have had a plan, but it may have fallen apart after. </p>
<p>It is frightening that he (or both of them ) may have done this on purpose… Maybe she wanted to be on Oprah</p>
<p>Think of all the cases in which an estranged spouse kills the kids (often before killing him/herself). Sometimes it’s out of revenge, while in other instances it seems to be that they want to spare the kids the sadness of growing up in a broken or unhappy home. (Twisted logic, I know–but maybe this is a variation on that.)</p>
<p>It may be that the mother was involved, but I <strong>really</strong> think that making assumptions about her based on how she behaves in the public eye is a huge error. Reminds me strongly of Lindy Chamberlain, wrongly convicted of murdering her child, largely because she would cry for the public. </p>
<p>You don’t know what the mother is feeling inside from observing her outside.</p>
<p>In my area, there was a case a number of years ago where a father forgot his child who was sleeping in the backseat of his car. He was not normally the one to take the child to daycare.When the daycare called the mother to say the child wasn’t there, she called him, and he realized what he had done and raced out to the car, which he had left on the top deck of a parking garage. The child was alive, but suffering. The parents took him to a pharmacy and bought something like pedialyte and tried to get him to drink it. Eventually they took him to the hospital. The father, a lawyer, was charged with some kind of negligence, and received some kind of wrist slap. This was met with a lot of criticism from those who observed that poor women who left their kids alone for brief periods while they did some essential task routinely were jailed and lost custody. I suppose one could say it was accidental, but people weren’t buying that as the reason for the different penalty. People had the feeling that if this was a poor woman who forgot her baby in the car while she went into the grocery store she’d be in jail and the kid would be in the foster system.</p>
<p>Well, there is the whole lawyer issue. Certainly the ability to afford a good lawyer keeps a lot of guilty people out of jail. In this case the life insurance policy they purchased on a baby raises a lot of red flags. </p>
<p>The mom has admitted to searching internet sites related to car deaths. That combined with her immediate reaction at the day care that her husband must have left him in the car and her unemotional state makes her very suspect in terms of this being a collaborative effort. It is also very strange that she made the comment at the funeral that she would not choose to bring her son back if she could. What grieving parent says that?!</p>
<p>I agree with Soozie that it’s not just any one thing in this situation that makes it look deliberate, but too many things altogether. I don’t even want to think about what anyone would find on my computer searches if any odd thing happens, or in any given computer. I think I looked up chloroform myself when the Casey Anthony case was in the news </p>
<p>I can tell you I am having a very difficult time wrapping my head around a parent planning this horrible thing, much less two parents in collusion. Terrible as all child murders are, and especially appalling when a parent is the perp, some circumstances, one can see might have been loss of control on part of the parent, true temporary insanity, but this, this sounds deliberate and the very idea of letting anyone expire that way is particularly heinous. It really disturbs me greatly. </p>
<p>They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the father left the child in the car to die.</p>
<p>How in the world are they going to prove that? It’s all circumstantial evidence. You can’t crawl into the guys head to see what he was thinking. </p>
<p>Well, there’s potential motive–the life insurance policies and the desire to live a “child-free” life, as evidenced by the behaviors most spouses with happy families don’t engage in (sexting up to six women at a time, including teenagers). He allegedly told one of the women that he didn’t have a conscience.</p>
<p>The child was said to have died by noon…around the time the father went out to the car to put something in it? Did he really not notice (smell) anything? Plus, with the research he did on people/animals dying in hot cars, he likely had some knowledge of how long it would have taken.</p>
<p>And then there are the external injuries to the kid, along with the confrontational and suspicious behavior when the police arrived on the scene.</p>
<p>I cannot believe that he actually drove his car at noon, and STILL didn’t notice the child! Is this what sopposedly happened? Unbelievable. Also unbelievable that he didn’t notice this smell the moment he got in.</p>
<p>Whether the mother had anything to do with it is another matter, and I really don’t think that condemning someone because of what you perceive their demeanor to be on TV is a wise thing.</p>
<p>In this case, I would think the police have more options, though, since even if you can’t prove intent what is 100 % certain is that the father left the child in the car. Obviously, negligence isn’t going to get the same penalty as intentional murder, but it does give room for pushing the penalties on whatever charges might apply to the max. </p>
<p>But I also think that if the circumstantial evidence is strong enough, you might get to the point where whatever doubts remain no longer fall under the category of reasonable. </p>
<p>Here’s a link to some of the court proceedings.
<a href=“http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/03/justin-ross-harris-cooper-toddler-hot-car-death-live-blog”>http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/07/03/justin-ross-harris-cooper-toddler-hot-car-death-live-blog</a></p>
<p>I think it can be argued that those injuries were from thrashing in the car seat . Also the scratches on the back of his head may have been from lying on the pavement and being given CPR. </p>
<p>I hope they can prove it…</p>
<p>Circumstantial evidence is evidence. Many cases that result in guilty verdicts are based entirely on circumstantial evidence and this case has plenty already. It’s also safe to bet we don’t know everything. I have never really understood these forgetting about the baby situations, admittedly. How do you take your kid to daycare and forget to bring him in? But, this one has an email from the day care center and the dad returning to the car at lunch. As for the mom, the first thing she reportedly said when the child was not at daycare was something like, “Uh-oh, Ross must have left him in the car.” I mean, who thinks that? And, he reportedly discussed collecting on the insurance policy with other family members.</p>
<p>I think there is some general consensus that parents react with some emotion upon the unexpected death of a child. Perhaps there are exceptions but here you have 2 parents that appear totally untouched by the death of their son. When you couple that with the many other things that are more than just suspect, the conclusion I reach is not a good one. But hopefully a jury will be given the opportunity to review all the facts in this case and make a determination in accordance with the guidelines of the law. </p>
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<p>So this poor child had out grown his rear facing car seat yet the straps were adjusted to the lowest level? To me, this shows the parents had no concern for the child’s comfort and safety even if they didn’t plan to kill him! I can’t see anyone believing this was an accident at this point.</p>
<p>^He had outgrown his car seat, but they hadn’t yet gotten him a new one - maybe because they knew he wouldn’t need it?</p>
<p>I had read that they bought a front facing seat and it was in dads car. Then they switched it out to rear facing and front facing one was supposed to be in moms car. Don’t know if its accurate or not.</p>
<p>I may be wrong but I thought he tried to do CPR with the baby still in the carseat. I think the carseat was on the pavement not the child. </p>
<p>“In 2004 the Nakia Burgess case in Atlanta similarly raised questions about the parent’s intent”</p>
<p>A single mother with a special needs child that not every day care was willing to accept, desperate to find and hold a job… That was my first thought. Surely enough, at least as presented by her attorney, that was apparently what was going on. Quite different from this case…</p>
<p>He didn’t drive his car at noon. He rode with friends to lunch and the the nearby Home Depot store and he tossed the lightbulb a he bought in the car after lunch. I think his friends dropped him at his car to put the bulbs in. Not sure if he got back in their car after that or walked back into his office. </p>