The relief was almost palpable when attorneys arguing the first case before the Georgia Supreme Court one recent morning announced on the dot their time was up.

In the 40 minutes that ticked slowly by before that, appellate lawyers for the defense and the district attorney had to debate the relevance of sexual communications by the then-35-year-old father of Cooper Harris, a toddler who died in a hot car during an Atlanta summer. Some of those messages were sent that very day—June 18, 2014.