[7] On June 22, 2022, Ross's convictions of murder and cruelty relating to his son, Cooper Harris, were overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court, which concluded that he had not received a fair trial.
At around 8:57 a.m., he and Cooper ate breakfast at a Chick-fil-A restaurant less than a mile from his office on Cumberland Parkway, near its intersection with Paces Ferry Road in Vinings, Georgia.
Ross then drove his SUV to the Home Depot office where he worked, with Cooper strapped in a rear-facing car seat in the back.
After his friends dropped him off at his workplace parking lot, he walked to his SUV, opened the driver's side door, and placed the bulbs inside.
After driving for a few minutes, Ross pulled into a shopping center parking lot, where witnesses reported hearing "squealing tires"[18] and a man screaming, "What have I done?
[16][20] The investigation into the death of Cooper Harris focused heavily on his father's extramarital sexual affairs, which was later identified as a significant procedural error.
[21] On the day of Cooper's death, Ross had been sending and receiving sexually explicit texts (some with nude images) in conversations with six persons, including one under the age of consent.
[22] A jury in Glynn County spent about a month listening to evidence in the case and deliberated for four days before convicting Ross on all counts.
After nearly three weeks of jury selection, Superior Court Judge Mary Staley Clark, granted a defense motion for a change of venue, and the trial was moved to Brunswick in Glynn County.
[13] The defense, led by Maddox Kilgore, said that Ross had forgotten Cooper in the car as a consequence of his daily routine having been altered in several ways.
[38] Prosecution witness Roy Yeager, a detective, testified that he had not found any such internet searches when he examined the cellphones and computers owned by Ross and his then-wife.
[50] On June 22, 2022, in a 6–3 decision, the court agreed, finding that the evidence regarding Ross's sexual activities was "needlessly cumulative and prejudicial"[21][51]: 3 and reversing the convictions on the murder and cruelty counts.
[52][53][54] The court's majority opinion said that the state had introduced "a substantial amount of evidence to lead the jury to answer a ... legally problematic question: what kind of man is [Ross]?
[15][51]: 101–02 A dissenting opinion said that the state was "entitled to introduce, in detail, evidence of the nature, scope, and extent of the truly sinister motive it ascribed to [Ross]".
[12][11][55] In a statement, Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Brody said that, after an eleven-month review, it determined that the Georgia Supreme Court's decision would prevent it from relying on "[c]rucial motive evidence", and, in light of that restriction, it had decided it would not retry Ross on the murder and cruelty charges.