A Cobb judge has denied a request for retrial for the Cobb County man convicted in 2016 of murdering his toddler by deliberately leaving him in a hot car two years earlier, a decision the defense says they will appeal.

Mitch Durham, the Marietta attorney representing Justin Ross Harris, declined to comment on the case or the ruling Monday, but told the MDJ he would appeal Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark’s decision to the Georgia Supreme Court.

Clark shot down the request for a new trial late last week, after Durham contended his client’s original trial was improperly conducted and he deserved a new day in court. Harris was sentenced to life in prison after his conviction.

Clark’s more than 70-page order is simply a list of claims made by Harris’ legal team on why he should be given a new trial and responses from the court explaining why it had not erred. Oral arguments in the appeal were presented during hearings in December and March, according to Clark’s order.

Among Clark’s responses in her order denying the motion for a new trial, the judge maintains that evidence presented in the case was “sufficient to sustain Harris’ convictions beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Following his 2016 trial, Harris was convicted of malice murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was also convicted of felony murder, cruelty to children, and distribution of obscene materials to a minor.

“(It) was never in dispute that Defendant left his 22-month-old child in a hot car all day on June 18, 2014 and that the child died of hyperthermia. The issue in dispute was whether Defendant did this accidentally or intentionally,” Clark’s order reads. “The State provided evidence of Defendant’s actions throughout the day of the murder which were sufficient for a jury to determine that he had acted intentionally.”

The order goes on to describe Harris’ relationship with a 17-year-old girl, which included sending sexual messages and explicit photos. Clark also struck down in the order the Harris team’s calling for counts related to child sex crimes to be dropped.

Harris’ appeal says he should have been separately tried for the alleged sex offenses that catapulted the case from notorious to scandalous. Harris was revealed to have conducted multiple extramarital affairs while married to his then-wife, Leanna Cooper. The prosecution charged that Harris’ motive for the killing, in which he left Cooper Harris in the car for seven hours, was to start a new life free from the burdens of his wife and child. Clark’s order said sufficient evidence of those claims was also presented, and the court did not violate Harris’ rights in holding one trial.

Much of an appeal hearing in December was devoted to the testimony of Dr. David Diamond, a neuroscience professor at the University of South Florida who has studied what causes parents to accidentally leave their children in cars. In 2016, Clark, who also presided over the trial, ordered Diamond to hand over as evidence notes he had taken during meetings with Harris. That order, Harris’ appeal said, was an improper use of discovery laws that tainted the trial.

To that, Clark’s order responds, since Diamond intended to base his expert testimony on Harris’ situation being “consistent with a ‘failure of memory systems,’” the prosecution was entitled “to know exactly what Defendant said to Dr. Diamond that led Dr. Diamond to opine that expert opinion.”

The defense’s decision in 2016 to not call Diamond to the stand after his notes had been revealed meant the defense “waived this error,” Clark wrote.

Jan. 3—The news, anyone?

The left-leaning national media has been full of puff pieces about Georgia U.S. senatorial candidates Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, but the three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, have ignored the recent news about the pair as the campaign draws to a close.

As of last week, as they ignored Hunter Biden’s increasingly concerning ties to China, they skipped Ossoff’s ties to China, in which a state-backed company made payments to him and which he initially failed to disclose on finance forms; the domestic violence allegation made about Warnock by his ex-wife in which she accused him of running over her foot; and the child abuse that was alleged at a church camp Warnock supervised, in which a camper said counselors poured urine on him and forced him to remain outside overnight.

And, last week, the same networks ignored that a rapper with a long history of sexually violent tweets and promoting rape headlined a rally for Ossoff and Warnock.

Is it any wonder that the news, as one CNN reporter last week admitted, would be “approached differently” under President-elect Joe Biden?

Better check your sources

Department of Defense officials gave President-elect Joe Biden a quick reality check last week after the former vice president suggested the Trump information wasn’t giving his team all the information it needed during the transition period.

Turns out, the current administration was actually giving the incoming administration more than it requested, and that Biden’s bloviating was just political.

“The Department of Defense has conducted 164 interviews with over 400 officials, and provided over 5,000 pages of documents — far more than initially requested by Biden’s transition team,” Acting Secretary Chris Miller said in a statement. “DOD’s efforts already surpass those of recent administrations with over three weeks to go and we continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and answer any and all requests for information in our purview.”

The department also has responded to 188 requests for information to date and is continuing to schedule interviews with senior leaders and career officials into January, officials said.

Biden, clearly without evidence, said his team had “encountered roadblocks” and said it was irresponsibility” on the half of the Trump administration.

Kwanzaa memories

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris changed no minds of those who believe she’ll say or do anything to get ahead when she talked last week of celebrating the cultural holiday of Kwanzaa as a child.

“You know, my sister and I, we grew up celebrating Kwanzaa,” she said in a video message. “Every year our family would — and our extended family, we would gather around, across multiple generations, and we’d tell stories. The kids would sit on the carpet and the elders would sit in chairs, and we would light the candles, and of course, afterwards have a beautiful meal.”

The problem is, Kwanzaa wasn’t invented until two years after Harris was born and took more than a decade to become widely known. And the California senator grew up, after the age of 5, in a single-parent home with an Indian mother, and lived in Montreal from seventh grade through high school.

“Bet $100 that Kamala, & her Indian single mother, growing up in Montreal, had a better chance of celebrating Boxing Day,” said one tweeter.

The claim was similar to one she made about listening to music from Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur while in college, though neither one released albums until well after she graduated. Supportive media later said she was answering a previous question about the music she liked, not what she listened to in college.

No need for ICE?

Many Democrats are on record for wanting to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Indeed, one Democratic Georgia senatorial candidate, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, has spoken in front of groups holding signs encouraging it, and the other, Jon Ossoff, has campaigned with elected officials who have pledged to do it.

So does ICE do enough to earn its keep, or is just an impediment to open borders, as Democrats claim?

Well, in its end-of-year report, the agency said it had removed 185,884 illegal aliens from the country in fiscal 2020. Of those removals from the interior of the country, 92% had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. Further, it made 103,603 arrests, of which approximately 90% had a criminal conviction or charge. Those included 1,837 homicide offenses, 10,302 sexual assault or sex offenses, and 37,247 assault offenses.

The agency’s Homeland Security Investigations sector, which deals with transnational crimes and threats, made 31,915 arrests, seized more than 1.4 million pounds of narcotics, confiscated 6,688 weapons, conducted 3,671 gang arrests, and identified and rescued 1,012 victims of child exploitation and 418 victims of human trafficking.

Nothing to see here, open borders Democrats?

Dec. 15—MARIETTA — Justin Ross Harris, the Cobb County man who four years ago was convicted of murdering his 20-month-old son, began his appeal for a new trial Monday morning.

Represented by Marietta attorney Mitch Durham, the defense argued that a number of errors in the original trial deeply compromised Harris’s ability to receive fair treatment in court.

Harris attended the hearing through a video stream from Macon State Prison. Clad in a white jumpsuit, he occasionally took notes throughout the day, but was otherwise silent. Both Durham and the prosecutor, Linda Dunikoski, senior assistant district attorney for Cobb County, also joined the hearing via Zoom.

Much of Monday’s proceedings were devoted to the testimony of Dr. David Diamond, a neuroscience professor at the University of South Florida who has studied what causes parents to accidentally leave their children in cars.

Diamond was initially expected to testify in the original trial as an expert witness. But Cobb Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark, who presided over both the trial and Monday’s hearing, ordered Diamond in 2016 to hand over as evidence notes he had taken during meetings with Harris. Harris’s defense claimed it was placed in an “untenable position,” and ultimately declined to call Diamond to the stand.

Now the defense says handing over those notes was an improper use of discovery laws, and that it tainted the trial.

During the hearing, Durham and Dunikoski cross-examined Diamond on his medical expertise and specifics of Harris’s case. According to Diamond, evidence including Harris’s lack of sleep the night prior and that he broke his usual morning routine suggested the child’s death could have been a mere accident.

Following Diamond’s appearance, the court heard the testimony of Maddox Kilgore, who led Harris’s defense in the 2016 trial. Kilgore said Diamond had been the defense’s “primary witness” and “cleanup hitter,” but the disclosure of his confidential notes “scuttled” that strategy.

“We had hoped and expected David Diamond to be able to testify that what was observed in this case was consistent with memory failure he had seen in numerous, numerous other cases,” Kilgore said.

Near the end of Kilgore’s testimony, a testy exchange arose between him and Dunikoski as Kilgore argued that Diamond’s notes should not have been released.

“So, your fear was actually of the state’s attorneys being so good?” Dunikoski asked.

“You betcha. You betcha,” Kilgore said, raising his voice. “The state put its meaning to those words. A mediocre lawyer can do that, and the lawyers in this case were better than mediocre. They were very good.”

“What’s exactly going on right now? Y’all are talking over one another. I’m not sure why,” Judge Staley Clark said, shortly before adjourning for the day.

The hearing will resume Tuesday morning. The defense is expected to touch on further areas in which they say Harris was denied due process. Among those is the argument that Harris should have been separately tried for the alleged sex offenses that catapulted the case from notorious to scandalous.

Harris was revealed to have conducted multiple extramarital affairs while married to his then-wife, Leanna Cooper. The prosecution charged that Harris’s motive for the killing, in which he left Cooper Harris in the car for seven hours, was to start a new life free from the burdens of his wife and child.

Following his 2016 trial, Harris was convicted of malice murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was also convicted of felony murder, cruelty to children, and distribution of obscene materials to a minor.

At the lunch break, Durham told Judge Staley Clark that he believed the hearing was ahead of schedule, and he did not anticipate needing the three full days set aside for the appeal.

Investigators say that a man sexually assaulted a girl and fathered her child more than eight years ago.

Devashia Oneil Maddox was arrested Monday and charged with statutory sex offense with a child by an adult, rape of a child by an adult and kidnapping.

The 32 year old was picked up a week after allegations from another accuser were lodged against him. That case is still being investigated.

According to the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office, Maddox sexually assaulted a girl who was under the age of 16 multiple times between eight and nine years ago. Those encounters resulted in the birth of a child, according to Detective Matthew Sadler.

Sadler said the investigation is in its early stages, and Maddox could have used other personal relationships to sexually assault additional children.

“It’s so early it’s hard to know what the scope will be,” he said. “Generally, it’s not just one victim out there… We’re still exploring other possible victims.”

Maddox was put in the Cleveland County Detention Center before posting a $100,000 bond.

Maddox is on probation for convictions of drug possession and resisting an officer in Georgia in December 2019, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

Sadler said that anyone with information on allegations against Maddox should call him at 704-484-4888.

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©2020 Gaston Gazette, Gastonia, N.C.

Roswell Police Department and child safety experts Revved Up Kids are teaming up to teach parents and kids what to do when approached by a predator.

The workshop will be held at the Hembree Park Gymnasium Saturday, Feb. 8. and is open to students kindergarten through fifth grade.

According to public information officer Sean Thompson, Revved Up Kids teaches kids to be aware of both strangers and adults they know.

“Often times a predator will attempt to break down barriers with the child because most children aren’t going to just let some stranger touch them,” Thompson said.

More than 1 in 10 children is a victim of sexual abuse, according to Revved Up Kids. Child sex trafficking is a lucrative crime that generates annual revenues of more than $30 billion for the traffickers and Atlanta has become one of the major hubs for sex trafficking.

According to the Georgia Sex Offender Registry, Fulton County has 1,528 registered sex offenders. Roswell has a total of 23, two of whom are labeled as sexual predators.

The class is $30 dollars per participant. Parents are required to register in advance at revvedupkids.org/events.

A registered sex offender who had been sought by the Calhoun Police Department and other law enforcement agencies was arrested recently and is in the process of being transferred to Whitfield County to face new charges of child molestation, indecent exposure and enticing a child.

Thomas Justin Wooten, 37, of 597 Daniel Road, Trenton, was arrested in Huntsville, Alabama, last week on outstanding warrants from the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office.

Whitfield Sheriff Scott Chitwood said Wednesday that Wooten had previously been reported in multiple locations, including Calhoun, as exposing himself to children and attempting to lure children into his black Chevrolet Z71 pickup truck.

The Calhoun Police Department has also levied two counts each of enticing a child for indecent purposes and public indecency, both felonies.

Whitfield authorities began investigating after receiving such reports in November only to discover that Calhoun authorities were also actively investigating similar incidents. They later discovered the same suspect had exposed himself and tried to lure a child into his truck using toys back in March of 2018 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wooten was arrested by Chattanooga police for indecent exposure and was out of jail on bond.

During the investigation law enforcement officials discovered Wooten is a registered sex offender in Dade County. They also were able to locate the truck outside of Wooten’s place of business and match it and stickers on the vehicle to descriptions given to Calhoun and Whitfield authorities. Additionally, cellphone data also placed Wooten at the scene of the crimes in both locations.

Last week, with the assistance of Dade County Sheriff’s Office and Calhoun Police Department, the Whitfield sheriff’s office executed a search warrant on Wooten’s residence in Dade County. As a result of the search warrant, additional items of evidence were collected and the warrant for the new charges was filed.

Wooten was arrested in Alabama last Friday and was being transferred to Whitfield County on Wednesday.

Chitwood said that the Calhoun Police Department, Dade County Sheriff’s Office, Chattanooga Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigations and Huntsville Police Department all assisted with the investigation.

Rome City Schools board members went over student programs and policies Tuesday as part of their annual retreat, held at the Waverly Hotel in Atlanta.

Superintendent Lou Byars said dual enrollment numbers in RCS skyrocketed from 118 students in the last school year to 252 in this one. With dual enrollment, students also take some college courses. The credits give them a head start once they graduate high school.

Board members talked about ways to keep expanding opportunities.

“One of our goals is to increase diversity in our gifted programs,” Byars said.

While the number of Hispanic students increased the most for minority enrollment in the gifted programs, the gifted and dual enrollment programs are still overwhelmingly made up of white students. The Rome City Schools district is majority minority, Byars said.

“Our student enrollment needs to reflect that. It has to change,” said RCS school board member Alvin Jackson. “The more we get our students involved, particularly our minority students, the better off we’ll be.”

When asked how students were selected for the gifted programs, Byars said anyone can recommend that a student be tested — including the students themselves.

“I know this because my daughter recommended herself over 20 years ago,” he laughed. “The teacher did not think she was gifted, but she ended up passing.”

Dawn Williams, the assistant school superintendent, said even peers can recommend their own friends be tested for the gifted program.

During the retreat the board’s attorney, Chris Twyman, also presented two proposed written policies — one regarding police interviews of students and the other is regarding visitation.

Twyman said both policies are already in practice, but the school system needed clarification on each.

The first policy regarding interviewing and questioning by law enforcement specifies that parents are to be notified if police want to interview a student. The only exception is in the case of an emergency and Twyman said the determination of what constitutes an emergency is judged on a case by case basis.

“If it’s not an emergency, that interview is not happening if we can’t get in touch with a parent,” Twyman assured the school board.

One of the only times a parent might not be contacted is if there is a case of child abuse where the parent may be the perpetrator, he said. The policy also states that the only people who are allowed to search student lockers and vehicles on campus without a search warrant are school administrators.

In regards to the visitation policy, Twyman said that if a parent wants to visit a school, they simply have to give notice. In the case of a parent who is a registered sex offender, they would only be allowed to visit if their child is directly involved with a school event.

Under no circumstances are registered sex offenders allowed to volunteer for the district, and they will be escorted at all times while inside of the school, he said.

However, if a registered sex offender’s sentence states they are not to be on a school campus, they would not be allowed in any Rome city school — even to visit their child.

“We don’t override the law,” Twyman said.