Is there anyone that believes Ross is innocent?

Noname12345 said:

For those who still believes that there was "reasonable doubt" that this was an accident, please consider this: which decision is more natural when dropping off something at your car without the intention of getting into the car and driving away?

1) Drop off the items at the back.
2) Drop off the items at the front, which means you'd either have to TOSS your items across to the passenger seat, or inconvenience yourself later by putting your items on the driver's seat.

It is inconceivable for anyone who drives regularly to choose option 2 when dropping off something in the car (with no intention of getting into the car) unless there was a compelling reason not to use the back seat. In this case, I don't think it's too hard to figure out what RH's compelling reason not to drop off his bulbs at the back seat was.

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I throw things in from the driver's side all the time. I go to that door first out of habit. It also helps to ensure that I don't forget to take out whatever it is that I'm putting in the car. If I'm running several errands and grab something that I will later need at home, 9 times out of 10 I forget that thing by the time I get home if it's in the back seat.

So for me, the compelling reason to put the bulbs in the front seat was so he would see them when he grabbed his brief case from the passenger's seat when he got home.

If you don't look for nefarious reasons for everything he did that day, you find yourself realizing what he did really isn't that far out of the ordinary. Excluding the sexting, that is. But even that.... Lots of married parents do it (including ones that RH chatted with) and don't kill their kids.

I just listened to the latest episode of the Breakdown podcast tonite. Bill Rankin (host) interviewed Boring post-verdict, and he said some things that finally made sense, in terms of a motive. He called Ross a narcissist and said he believes Ross was expecting to get positive attention (I think he meant 'fame' in the form of national sympathy) from the event. This makes more sense to me than any other theory the prosecution has put forward, and I don't know why he didn't lay it out at trial.

TexMex said:

What did he tell the jury that was not true?

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Is this a serious question?

Harry Seaward said:

I throw things in from the driver's side all the time.

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This is exactly the type of mental gymnastics you have to do in order to convince yourself that there's nothing wrong with what RH did. I'm willing to bet that every single time you threw thigs in from the driver's side you got into the car and drove away right after.

Even if you did on some ocassion flippantly "throw" your things onto the passenger seat from the driver's side, I'm also willing to bet you looked towards where you were throwing your things, which would make something like a dying/dead baby in a car seat clearly visible to you if it was right in the middle of the back seat.

It's true there's nothing nefarious about throwing light bulbs into his car, but that's not really what happened. Throwing bulbs into the car without noticing his dying/dead baby is where the problem lies and what I believe ultimately convinced ALL 12 jurors that this was an intentional act.

DaisyK said:

According to Stoddard, he did:

"Stoddard says during his interview, Harris told them he had recently seen a video about hot cars that was made by veterinarian. Through internet records, they found that Harris had come across the video on the site Reddit.

Stoddard: Harris commented on video about leaving animal in hot car. "That would be terrible if my son was in the car. I would hate that."

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Yeah, he told LE that he thought as he watched the video "thay would be terrible if it happened to my son". He didn't comment on the actual video at the time. Given his tendency to talk too much and tell lies, this might just be more of his BS and maybe Cooper never crossed his mind at all when he watched the video.

Harry Seaward said:

Is this a serious question?

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Yes, it is.
What did Boring tell this jury that was not true?

From AJC

So what explains Harris’ actions? Why not just divorce his wife if, as the state claimed, he wanted to live as a single man, free of familial responsibilities?

“I think he’s a narcissist, absolutely,” the prosecutor said. “I think he was motivated by his own selfish needs. He was motivated also by people’s perceptions. And in some sick way I think he thought he was going to get attention from this as well. Like positive attention. He looked for a way he wouldn’t ‘look like the bad guy,’ so to speak.”

Self delete - happy thanksgiving everyone. [emoji884]


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I have always thought he was not guilty. Reckless, yes. Guilty of intentional murder? No way.


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RANCH said:

I think that the emphasis going forward should be on prevention and not punishment.

I'm not saying that parents who leave their kids in a hot car who then die shouldn't be punished, just that prevention is the more productive route to go on in order to stop these kinds of deaths from happening in the future. JMO

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Prevention when it is truly forgetfulness /neglect. This case was intentional murder.

Rayemonde said:

Yeah, he told LE that he thought as he watched the video "thay would be terrible if it happened to my son". He didn't comment on the actual video at the time. Given his tendency to talk too much and tell lies, this might just be more of his BS and maybe Cooper never crossed his mind at all when he watched the video.

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To me, it's like Scott Peterson predicting his wife's death right before he killed her. He told a girlfriend "This will be my first Christmas without her"!!!

Noname12345 said:

This is exactly the type of mental gymnastics you have to do in order to convince yourself that there's nothing wrong with what RH did. I'm willing to bet that every single time you threw thigs in from the driver's side you got into the car and drove away right after.

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Nope. 9 times out of 10 I toss it right in just like Ross did. If I'm getting in my car, I will hold whatever is in my hand until I get in the car and then put it on the seat. That's if it's something small, like a pack of light bulbs, for example. If it's too large to hold while I get in, I'll put it in from the passenger's side, because it's also most likely too large to toss.

Even if you did on some ocassion flippantly "throw" your things onto the passenger seat from the driver's side, I'm also willing to bet you looked towards where you were throwing your things, which would make something like a dying/dead baby in a car seat clearly visible to you if it was right in the middle of the back seat.

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I don't drive an SUV and I'm no where close to 6'3" (for the occasion I drive my wife's CR-V). I can't accurately say where I would be looking under the same circumstances as Ross. But I can reasonably consider where he didn't look doesn't point to guilt.

It's true there's nothing nefarious about throwing light bulbs into his car, but that's not really what happened. Throwing bulbs into the car without noticing his dying/dead baby is where the problem lies and what I believe ultimately convinced ALL 12 jurors that this was an intentional act.

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It's easy to not notice something if you don't know it's there. But I know it's impossible for a person to consider that if they're convinced he left his kid in the car on purpose.

Hello - as my introductory post to WS... I wanted to comment on this case. I've been following closely since day 1 when it happened. I have a child who is 3 year old and I'm a single, full time working mom. I used to be one of those "It would never happen to me... who forgets a child in a car?" type of thinkers.

Until last summer I had an incident that shook me and my beliefs about forgetting to my very core.

I have a medical alert service dog. We've been partnered for 4 years and she saves my life every day. She is with me 24/7/365. The only place I wouldn't take her is into an operating room. Otherwise, she is with me by my side 24 hours a day and even went to the hospital with me when I was in labor and gave birth. That's even MORE than a baby. We are PARTNERS. She gets in/out of the car multiple times per day.

Last summer I picked up a friend for lunch. My friend was in a cast and was having a hard time getting in/out of the car. When I got to where we were going there were three spots along the curb to choose from. Two of the spots had a tree or a large trash can blocking the passenger area and the middle spot was free of any obstruction so I picked the middle spot. My friend needed to be able to open the door all the way to get out. I got out of the car and was about to open the back door to put on my dog's service vest and bring her out of the car... Well, this woman in a big SUV didn't like it that we weren't pulling up to the front spot and started having a hissy fit that she would have to parallel park. She came up to me and was screaming and shouting that I was rude, and I need to pull up, etc.. and it was an awful scene for a couple mins. We eventually told her to pound sand and then left to go to the restaurant. We talked about this silly woman, then had lunch. We were in there about an hour and I have to tell you it was a very hot day, around 91 degrees.

It wasn't until I got back in the car and heard panting that I realized I'd left my service dog in the car. The electric shock of realization that went through me was something I'll never forget. I have tinted windows in the back and of course the windows were all the way up. My god, I didn't even think about her ONE TIME. I didn't even think of her as I was getting back TO the car. I was so upset with the lady yelling at us, then we had lunch and... it just slipped my mind.

But here's the thing -- It slipped my mind when I had my HAND ON THE DOOR to open it about 10 seconds before! That's how fast it happened.

I quickly got my dog some water and some shade. I let her back in the car once the air conditioning made the car cool. And luckily she didn't suffer any ill effects. My dog was OK, but jesus, I could have killed her.

This is a dog that's by my side at ALL times: Trains, planes, automobiles, labor & Delivery, restaurants, theatre, concerts, movies, you name it! This is a dog that I take in and out of the car multiple times per day. This is a dog I NEED to keep me safe and alive.

And yet I forgot her. How could I have done that? I've thought it over and played it over in my head about a million times.

I was distracted by this awful, screaming woman in my face and worried about getting friend out of the car in her cast and I simply forgot my service dog. Never thought about her a single time while we ate on that very hot day. What kind of person does that?

I'm the kind of person, apparently.

It still haunts me what I did - because even if she suffered no long term effects, it was animal cruelty.

My point is that, until it happens to you, it's very difficult to believe in or understand the "Swiss Cheese" memory thing that happens. It's a brain fart, not a deliberate act. No one wants to believe it could happen to them so it's so much more comforting to think THEY are just bad people. Those OTHER people are bad/evil/bad parents/whatever, NOT ME. That's exactly how I thought until this happened to me.

Anyway, I don't presume to know if he is innocent or not, only he knows what was in his heart that day, but I do now understand how it could happen - even when the drive was just a few minutes long.

crayon said:

Anyway, I don't presume to know if he is innocent or not, only he knows what was in his heart that day, but I do now understand how it could happen - even when the drive was just a few minutes long.

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Thanks for sharing. I too had a situation where my wife and I were sometimes switching cars and my older daughter would sometimes watch my younger son. One day my wife assumed my daughter was watching my son and I assumed my wife knew I had him with me when I switched cars with her that day. She would normally leave work when I switched cars with her but that day didn't tell me when I dropped the car off that she planed to stay another couple of hours at work. I wasn't expecting she would work late so it never occurred to me to let her know our son was in the car. I parked the car in the driveway of her work, so she got in to move the car to a parking spot. I sometimes would *advertiser censored* the rear view mirror to the side so I could see my son while I was driving. It just so happened that I did it on that day and my wife just so happened to notice the mirror which clued her in that my son was in the car. He never made a sound and if she hadn't happened to notice the mirror, he would have been left in her car that day. To make matters worse, it happened to be the hottest day of the year- 118 degrees in Phoenix. There's no doubt in my mind he would have been dead two hours later when she left work.

I know this situation is not the same as a parent 'forgetting' a kid in a car, but if someone wanted to make a case against my wife and I that we wanted our son dead and conspired together to make it look like an accident, I can certainly see a jury deciding there were just too many coincidences for it to be an accident. This is why I give Ross and other parents in the same situation a lot of room when it comes to 'coincidences' (i.e. circumstantial evidence) and a bunch of statements that could be read two or more different ways; which is the totality of Ross' case.

I remember when Ross' case hit the news in 2014. Almost everyone was certain he was guilty of murder even before the case was presented to the grand jury. I was holding out with the 'possible accident' crew, but then the media was reporting that he was watching videos and doing research on how long it takes a child to die in a hot car, that he was visiting 'child-free' websites and that he looked into his car on his lunch break. So then I gave up on believing it was an accident. But then it turns out all of that was a lie. When someone has to lie to convince people of their version of facts, I have a really hard time believing they themselves believe their case is really all that strong. I'm not 100% convinced Ross is innocent of malice murder, but I am no where near beyond a reasonable doubt that it was an accident, and that jury would be hung if I was sitting on it, at least for that charge.

That's an amazing dog story, according to this information:

If your dog's body temperature gets to 109ºF or higher, heatstroke is the result. The cells of the body rapidly start to die. The brain swells, causing seizures. Lack of blood supply to the GI tract creates ulcers. Dehydration leads to irreversible kidney damage. All these catastrophic events take place WITHIN A MATTER OF MINUTES.

http://healthypets.mercola.com/site...8/10/dead-in-minutes-dogs-and-heatstroke.aspx

According to this chart, if the temp was 90 degrees outside, the temp on the inside of the car would have been 109 in TEN MINUTES. After an hour, it would have been 133 degrees.

https://www.avma.org/public/PetCare...Interior-Air-Temperature-v.-Elapsed-Time.aspx

Truly an amazing story.

@rocco - Yes absoustely - by all rights my dog should have been dead or nearly dead when I got back to the car & I still consider it a minor miracle that she made it through the ordeal. She wasn't just panting she was panting heavily and when I got her out the car, she vomited. I was lucky enough to have a number of gallon water bottles in and was able to cool her with those.

I still thank about it all the time and I also thank my lucky stars that it happened when the DOG was in the car and not my child.

I did learn from my mistake: Before this incident I would put my purse in the backseat area when I put my baby in the car. A purse is something I automatically grab every time I get out of the car. After this incident, I put my purse in the backseat when I have the dog in the car too.

The whole point is: That Swiss Cheese Memory/Brain Fart thing can happen in an instant. It still baffles me that she never even crossed my mind the entire time.

crayon said:

@rocco - Yes absoustely - by all rights my dog should have been dead or nearly dead when I got back to the car & I still consider it a minor miracle that she made it through the ordeal. She wasn't just panting she was panting heavily and when I got her out the car, she vomited. I was lucky enough to have a number of gallon water bottles in and was able to cool her with those.

I still thank about it all the time and I also thank my lucky stars that it happened when the DOG was in the car and not my child.

I did learn from my mistake: Before this incident I would put my purse in the backseat area when I put my baby in the car. A purse is something I automatically grab every time I get out of the car. After this incident, I put my purse in the backseat when I have the dog in the car too.

The whole point is: That Swiss Cheese Memory/Brain Fart thing can happen in an instant. It still baffles me that she never even crossed my mind the entire time.

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Well, you're one lucky owner and you have one very lucky dog! The dog must be in extremely good health to endure that hour in a car that got that hot. I have a close family friend who has a service dog. As soon as she enters a restaurant, her first thought is to look for a place to be seated where there is room for her dog to lie down and not be in the way. And she always has to put up with at least one comment from some other patron such as 'What's a DOG doing in here? This is a restaurant!" I'm sure you know what I mean (you know how people are). She even get those type of comments when she takes the dog in a store but restaurants are the worst. I'm very happy to hear this turned out so well for you and your dog. I absolutely know how devastated an owner of a service dog would be to lose their dog!

I can't understand how someone could forget a child in a car, but I won't say I believe it could never happen. I truly believe it is possible. However, I don't believe that's what happened here.

He is Guilty. Never a doubt in my mind. Too many other things happened that day that point to him trying to cover up his guilt.

I am anxiously awaiting the sentencing phase, though no punishment is severe enough, IMO.

I also believe there was another individual who knew what was happening that day. I would like to see more charges brought in this case, but I don't expect it. I digress...that's for another thread.

caribou_birdie said:

He is Guilty. Never a doubt in my mind. Too many other things happened that day that point to him trying to cover up his guilt.

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What did he do to cover up his guilt? All of the experts testified there was no evidence that he tried to erase anything from his phone or computers. This seems to be true, considering the swath of a smut trail he left behind him. The most damning thing I can come up in terms of 'cover up' was throwing the publix receipt in the trash and hemming and hawing when accounting for the lunchtime part of his day during the Stoddard interview.

Here's the way I think about it. Pick out any day of your life. Now imagine someone goes over every second of that day and makes an excruciatingly detailed list of everything you did, every website you visited, every internet search you made, everything you said and every email and text message you sent; and does the same thing for every day of your life prior. Now imagine the dead body of a loved one turns up in your proximity on that same day. Unless you have the personality of a potato, people could interpret everything they learn about you in a variety of ways. If you happen to like having sex with people other than your spouse, how do you suppose that fact will color the way other people look at all of the other details of your life? Be sure to imagine you yourself being placed in this situation. Otherwise the exercise doesn't work.

Harry Seaward said:

What did he do to cover up his guilt?

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I know he didn't try to erase anything. He knew those things would make him look distracted, he wanted a jury to think exactly as everyone else does that believes it was a horrible accident. I am not using any of those things to determine his guilt. Those things don't even matter in this case, in my opinion.

1- He sent his wife a text message asking her when she would be picking up the child. I believe he did this in an attempt to make it look like a normal day.

2- The email from the school he received that he glossed over. Again, like any other normal day.

3- Placing the light bulbs in his car after lunch. Again, like any other day.

Hearing some of the jury members discuss why they chose the guilty verdict solidified it for me.

caribou_birdie said:

I know he didn't try to erase anything. He knew those things would make him look distracted, he wanted a jury to think exactly as everyone else does that believes it was a horrible accident. I am not using any of those things to determine his guilt. Those things don't even matter in this case, in my opinion.

1- He sent his wife a text message asking her when she would be picking up the child. I believe he did this in an attempt to make it look like a normal day.

2- The email from the school he received that he glossed over. Again, like any other normal day.

3- Placing the light bulbs in his car after lunch. Again, like any other day.

Hearing some of the jury members discuss why they chose the guilty verdict solidified it for me.

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So you believe he's guilty because he did things that day that he would have done any other day?

And for the record, I'm not convinced this was a horrible accident. Just that he's not guilty of malice/felony murder beyond a reasonable doubt. I think people don't realize there is a difference.

I believe he was trying to make it look like "any other day" and that was his cover up. I believe the jury came to the right decision, albeit a very difficult decision. The piece of evidence that solidified it for me was this:I absolutely do not believe that he couldn't see nor smell his deceased child when he went to the car at lunch time.

Unfortunately, I am well versed in malice/felony murder as I have been involved in a malice murder case before that occurred in my family.