AROUND TOWN: Ross Harris' attorney wants an apology

If the word ‘bombshell’ came to mind when Justin Ross Harris’ murder conviction was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court last month, his attorney wants you to put it out of your head.

“We expected this day would come where the Supreme Court was going to right the ledger,” Marietta attorney Maddox Kilgore told the Journal. “This is not a bombshell. This is what happens when the state gets to call the shots … and the court lets every lick of evidence in, regardless of how irrelevant or prejudicial it is.”

Harris, previously found guilty by a 12-person jury in Glynn County of murdering his two-year-old son Cooper Harris by intentionally leaving him in a hot car for hours, isn’t likely to garner any sympathy from the general public. But Kilgore contends the deck was stacked against his client before they ever stepped into a courtroom.

How so? Kilgore pointed to two revelations which came to light in the early days of the investigation which overnight turned Harris from an object of pity to one of hatred.

Recall that in the first few days after Cooper Harris’ death, an online petition garnered thousands of signatures calling it a “horrible accident” and demanding his charges be dropped.

But the petition was retracted — and public opinion turned on a dime — after detectives alleged Harris confessed he’d researched “hot car deaths” online in the days leading up to the death. The claim was repeated in numerous warrants based on an affidavit by Cobb police Detective Shawn Murphy. Leanna Harris, Justin Ross Harris’ then-wife, was also initially said in a warrant to have researched the same subject.

At trial, defense attorney Bryan Lumpkin said that allegation was “completely false,” and then-Cobb Assistant District Attorney Jesse Evans conceded the evidence couldn’t be introduced because Murphy had heard it secondhand.

Remarking on the allegation to the Journal, Kilgore said, “That sounds pretty remarkable if someone confessed to doing that, and their child just died in a hot car. But in fact, that was a lie. It was a lie … that started the whole cavalcade of bad press, and started the community really lining up against Ross Harris.”

The other damning claim, Kilgore continued, was that Harris had been involved in an online group promoting a “childfree” lifestyle, which came from Detective Phil Stoddard.

Again, at trial, the evidence painted a somewhat different picture. As the Brunswick News' Wes Wolfe reported at the time, police and prosecutors said leading up to the trial Harris had sought out the online group independently.

“Instead, it was because a friend messaged him saying, ‘So r/childfree exists,’ in a manner the friend, Alex Hall, said during his own testimony was a joke,”  the Brunswick News wrote in 2016.

“And Ross messaged back, ‘grossness,’” said Kilgore. “And that little exchange right there, that wasn't even Ross doing it — it was coming from somebody else — that blew up in the media … It was all a lie. It was all a lie, and the police department never came clean.”

Kilgore continued, “To this day, I still have people coming up to me asking about those very things. ‘I mean, I can't believe that he just confessed it. I mean, how dumb for him to do all that research. He's doing research on how to kill children in hot cars.’

“No, he was not. Not only was he not doing it, he never said he did it. But that's in the community’s conscience, because, well, it was a lie. These were just lies that were told by police, and they’ve never been held accountable.”

Asked to respond to Kilgore’s comments, Cobb Police Sgt. Wayne Delk said, “As this case is potentially set to go back to trial, we are not going to comment on evidentiary information related to the prosecution of the case itself. Without getting into specifics, our department holds to the rules of evidence and testimony with regard to securing warrants and testifying at trial.”

Whether Harris, as Kilgore contends, was smeared as a killer by the police, prosecutors, and media will likely be up to a future jury to decide. The Supreme Court in its decision sent the case back down to the Cobb Superior Court level where Harris will be eligible for a new trial. For now he remains in the Macon state pen, still serving his sentence stemming from sexual contact with an underage girl.

WHAT KIND OF STUDY? Arriving in our inbox this month was a groundbreaking work of academic inquiry from Cobb school board member David Banks, who is serving his fourth term on the school board.

“A couple of years ago I embarked on creating an ethnicity study of the Cobb County High Schools using data submitted to the Georgia Department of Education in October of each year,” Banks writes. “Each year ethnicity data is submitted in October and March of a school year for each school in the State to the Department of Education.”

From what we can tell, this “study” simply consists of a table listing the number of students, broken down by race and ethnicity, who have attended Cobb schools from 1995 through 2022. Banks also created tables listing this data for different high schools.

While he indicated in the email that the “study” would list the schools in each school board post, as well as Marietta High School, Banks did not end up listing the data for posts 5, 6 and 7, nor the Marietta High data.

Banks’ purpose in this endeavor is unclear. But he did list some “observations,” listed below:

• “1. A reduction of 409 students for school year 2022
• “2. The number of Hispanic students continues to increase.
• “3. The number of Black students continues to decrease starting in 2016
• “4. The number of White students has continued to decrease since school year 1995
• “5. The number of Asian students is beginning to level
• “6. The student population continues to decrease starting in 2018. School year 2017 was the peak year.”

Catherine Pozniak, a Democrat challenging school board Chairman David Chastain in November's election, had some thoughts about Banks’ “study.”

“Like any efficient teacher, I decided to spot check using Sprayberry 1997 counts since, as a SHS ‘97, I was personally there,” Pozniak wrote on Twitter.

“The numbers don’t add up. What are the odds I landed on the only error in this 'study' by checking my high school and grad year?”

Well, Banks did say in his newsletter that he is “responsible for any errors.”

“The 'news' in this newsletter is not grounded in #facts or even #math. No one has time for a (thread) outlining all the mistakes + faulty assumptions, but here is one artifact showing why this 'roll-up' doesn’t add up to the 'observations' — these categories aren’t constant over time,” Pozniak wrote.

The study was the latest puzzling email sent by Banks to constituents. Other episodes in his tenure include referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” sending a misinformation-filled email about vaccines to constituents, calling a constituent a “mask Nazi,” and sharing statements purportedly from the Los Angeles Times that “95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens,” and “over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages” (the L.A. Times has debunked those claims and never printed them).

Banks’ fellow Republican board members elected him vice chair in January over the objection of board Democrats. Dr. Jaha Howard said then that Banks had embarrassed the county with his antics.

Banks didn't return a call seeking comment.

BORN TO RUN: “Peachtree done. Obstacle overcome,” Cobb Chair Lisa Cupid announced on social media after bagging 6.2 miles in Atlanta’s Peachtree Road Race.

The chair’s well-known to be an avid runner, but said she’d lost a step during the pandemic. She still bested her last run time in 2019 by two minutes — “Go figure,” she said.

With her 56:45 time (that’s a 9-minute mile), we also noticed she bested U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who posted a time of 1:26:15, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution political reporter Greg Bluestein, who clocked in at 1:01:55. State Sen. Michael "Doc" Rhett, D-Marietta, meanwhile, finished the race in 1:57:48.

But not one to spike the proverbial football, Cupid wrote, “...when it was over I realized the only one I was competing with the whole darn time was my own darn self. And that’s the beauty of the Peachtree and why I will sign up for this craziness… year after year, after year … God-willing.”

TRIVIA TIME: Well, it wasn’t your usual Thursday night bar trivia.

Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid opened her June 30 town hall with some questions for the audience.

“Before I go into my presentation, I do confessedly like to keep things a little light,” Cupid told the crowd of 50 or so attendees. After introducing the leaders of various departments in Cobb government, Cupid went on the wild goose chase for her questions.

“I hope nobody got my trivia answers,” she said as she made her way to the back of the room in search of the elusive questions. When Cupid was unable to locate them in the back of the room, she called an audible.

“OK, I’ll have to go from memory,” a dejected Cupid said.

“Alright, today’s somebody’s special birthday a lot of us have come to know,” said Cupid as she regained her confidence, returned from the back of the room to the lectern and kicked off the fun with the first question.

Being a town hall hosted by the chairwoman of Cobb County, surely this person who “a lot of us have come to know” would be a fixture in the county. Big Chicken, perhaps, or Marietta Mayor Steve “Thunder” Tumlin.

Before revealing the answer, Cupid let out a “there we go” under her breath and into the microphone as she found the trivia questions. They had been at the lectern all along.

“Someone that we’ve seen participate in our Olympics,” Cupid said, hinting at the answer. “He’s known as the ‘Flying Fish.’ Anybody know who’s the ‘Flying Fish?’”

One audience member yelled out Marc Spitz. When Cupid prompted them, “Who flies in the water, who flew in the water,” the obvious answer came from a few more attendees: “Aquaman!”

Of course, Aquaman is no Olympian despite his superhuman capabilities.

“C’mon, Olympic winner, was on a magazine cover with all the medals,” Cupid continued.

“Phelps! Michael Phelps!” numerous people shouted.

“Who said it first?” Cupid said as she made her way over to one of the five or so people who had yelled out the correct answer. Somebody had to get the first prize of the night, a pin from the chairwoman, and they could not all get one. The winner drew claps from a few people, then the game continued.

“Alrighty, today is a day that many of you may not know is recognized, but during the pandemic a lot of things have changed, a lot of people have not been going to the office, they have actually been working from ...” Cupid said, stopping short of the last word. “Home!” almost everyone in the crowd responded with the answer.

Cupid gave two of the audience members pins for responding that they work from home and have kept themselves at least somewhat presentable above the waist while on Zoom calls.

Finally, Cupid, a Detroit native, had to include a car question in her trivia extravaganza.

“Being from the Motor City, there’s a car that I truly have come to love. Today is a national what day? It’s an oldie but goodie car, it’s a sports car, anybody have one of these and know what day it is?” Cupid asked the crowd.

“Mustang?” one said with uncertainty.

“Corvette!” another said more confidently.

“Corvette! National Corvette Day,” Cupid confirmed. “So with that, I gave away my pins, but you will get a Cobb pen,” she told the fourth, and final, winner, who thanked her for the writing tool.

“So sometimes I try to keep things light because I know the work that we do in the county gets heavy,” Cupid said, “and there have been a lot of heavy things that have happened over the past, just week, let alone year.”

With that, Cupid transitioned as smoothly as one can from tricky trivia to town hall and into the night’s business.

NO BROADCAST: A reader who enjoys watching Marietta's annual Fourth of July parade from home pointed out that for the first time in many years, Cobb County did not broadcast the parade on the county's TV station.

AT sent a note to the county asking why.

"The Parade is sponsored by the City of Marietta not the County, and given we had several of our Communications staff out of town to enjoy the holiday w/family, we didn’t record it this year," said County Manager Jackie McMorris.

For those looking for a video of the parade, however, the city of Marietta streamed the full lineup on its Facebook page.