It's a showdown two years in the making, one that could go a long way to determining the fate of alleged killer Justin Ross Harris.
Defense attorney Maddox Kilgore provided a preview of sorts in his opening statement, framing the trial as a referendum on the Cobb County Police Department and one officer in particular.
Refuting lead detective Phil Stoddard's claim that Harris — charged with murdering his 22-month-old son Cooper — Googled the phrase "how long it takes a dog to die in a car," Kilgore said the veteran investigator knew it wasn't true but swore under oath that it was.
“It was made up by the Cobb police department,” Kilgore said., singling out Stoddard in the Glynn County courtroom.
This week, Kilgore will finally get the opportunity to cross examine Stoddard. It was the detective's jaw-dropping testimony at a July 2014 probable cause hearing that transformed the public's view of the case, so much so that an impartial jury could not be found in Cobb.
“You can’t overstate the importance of Stoddard,” to both sides, said Marietta defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who has followed the case since the beginning.
‘That’s just not true’
On Friday, Stoddard walked jurors through compelling video of Harris appearing alternately grief-stricken and composed before, during and after he's interviewed about Cooper's death.
Told by Stoddard he's likely to be charged criminally, Harris responds rationally, which jurors may find curious, considering the circumstances.
“Completely unintentional,” he said, referencing his son’s death. “I have no record whatsoever. I’m a great father. I have multiple people who will back that up.”
The defense will counter by putting the onus back on Stoddard, confronting him with inconsistencies highlighted in Kilgore’s opening, Merchant said. Ultimately, Harris’ team will try to force the detective into concessions he doesn’t want to make regarding assertions the state would rather not revisit.
For instance, Stoddard’s claim that Harris showed no emotion after his son’s death tells only half the story, the defense argues.
“That’s just not true,” Kilgore said in his opening, which included dashboard cam footage of Harris wailing in the parking lot of Akers Mill Square just moments after he said he found Cooper’s lifeless body.
He also appears inconsolable when reunited with then-wife Leanna at the Cobb police station.
“I can’t believe I did this,” he says in the police video. “Why me? Why me?”
‘Very hard to explain away’
The defense is also likely to challenge Stoddard on his claim that a stench of death emanated from Harris’ SUV. The implication: Harris knew his son was dead but ignored the smell.
Two other Cobb police officers testified they also smelled an odor that they associated with decomposition. But neither made note of the stench until they filed supplemental reports about a year later after consulting with Stoddard.
Former medical examiner Joe Burton, who has performed more than 10,000 autopsies and now works as a private consultant, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution it takes 24 hours for a decomposing body to release an odor.
One of the detective’s most shocking accusations, that Harris visited a “child-free” website less than two months before his son’s death, had initially been introduced by the prosecution as evidence of motive.
“We plan to show that he wanted to live a child-free life, or there’s evidence to suggest that based on internet searches,” prosecutor Chuck Boring said at the probable cause hearing.
Boring didn’t mention the child-free site during his opening statement, suggesting the state had backed off one of their most explosive claims. But last week one of Harris’ co-workers, called by the prosecution, revealed he had directed Harris to that subreddit as a joke. Harris had not sought out the group, as implied by Stoddard.
The state will attempt to immunize Stoddard before he’s cross examined, explaining that the discrepancies between testimony and reality were honest mistakes, Merchant said.
“Some of these things are going to be very hard to explain away,” she said.
Distrust Stoddard, distrust the state
The detective has walked back one incriminating claim at a pre-trial hearing in August, though he had little choice. Stoddard had testified that, when he returned to his car at lunchtime on the day he left Cooper strapped inside, Harris was “all the way inside the frame. … He’s in there. He has a clear view.” If true, Harris must have known at the time that his dead son was inside the car.
But surveillance footage from the Home Depot Treehouse parking lot, where Harris worked, showed that he could not have looked inside the SUV because his eyes remained above the roof line. At the August hearing Stoddard acknowledged that Harris’ head “was above the car.”
Stoddard will have to be careful not to appear hostile, said former Cobb prosecutor Philip Holloway.
“If the defense can make the jury dislike Stoddard, they’ll distrust Stoddard,” said Holloway, now a Marietta defense lawyer. “If they distrust Stoddard, they’ll distrust the state’s case.”
About the Author
