A six-member panel in Connecticut will decide how much the Infowars host owes to the families of shooting victims from Sandy Hook Elementary after he was found liable for defamation.
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A six-member jury has begun to deliberate over how much Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and Infowars host, owes the families of shooting victims from Sandy Hook Elementary after he was found liable for defamation.Credit
WATERBURY, Conn. — Jury deliberations began late Thursday in the damages trial of the Infowars fabulist Alex Jones, who defamed the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and unleashed years of abuse and threats against them from people who believed Mr. Jones’s lies on his online and radio broadcast that the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting was a hoax.
Growing emotional at times, Chris Mattei, a lawyer on the families’ legal team, walked the jurors through a litany of the abuse inflicted by Mr. Jones and his followers, who believed the families were complicit in the plot.
“You saw — he’s going on 10 years of defaming these families, and it’s not stopping,” Mr. Mattei told the jury during his closing remarks. “This is their one chance, and your one chance — your one chance — to render a verdict on just how much devastation Alex Jones has caused.”
Mr. Mattei did not ask the jury to consider a specific dollar amount. Rather, he asked them to assign a dollar amount to each lie Mr. Jones had told about the shooting, then multiply it by the more than 500 million times those lies drew readers from social media to Infowars’ website. There are 15 plaintiffs in the case, including parents, siblings and spouses of the victims, as well as a former F.B.I. agent who was singled out by the conspiracy theorists and labeled an actor.
Norm Pattis, Mr. Jones’s lawyer, portrayed Mr. Jones as a nationally unpopular “mad prophet” warning his audience about “globalist” plots to control their lives. He was admonished by the judge after he attacked the families’ lawyers, calling them “in it for the money.”
“Sympathy, bias and emotion don’t play a role in damages,” Mr. Pattis said. “I didn’t write the law.”
In its deliberations, the six-person jury will consider weeks of searing testimony from the families about the attacks and threats from conspiracy theorists who believed Mr. Jones’s lies, beginning with his broadcast three hours after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 20 first graders and six educators.
Understand the Cases Against Alex Jones
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A united front. Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist, is the focus of a long-running legal battle waged by families of victims of a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Here is what to know:
Pushing misinformation. Mr. Jones used his Infowars media company to spread lies about Sandy Hook, claiming that the attack in 2012, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed, was a hoax. The families of the victims say Mr. Jones’s lies have added to their devastation and his followers have harassed them, threatening their safety.
Defamation lawsuits. The families of 10 Sandy Hook victims sued Mr. Jones in four separate lawsuits. The cases never made it to a jury; Mr. Jones was found liable by default in all of them because he refused to turn over documents, including financial records, ordered by the courts over four years of litigation.
Mr. Jones’s line of defense. The Infowars host has claimed that his right to free speech protected him, even though the outcome of the cases was due to the fact that he failed to provide the necessary documents and testify.
Three trials. There will be three trials in total to determine how much Mr. Jones must pay the families of the Sandy Hook victims. The first happened in Austin, Texas, and a second trial is currently underway in Connecticut. The third trial is tentatively scheduled for later this year in Austin, but a date has not yet been set.
Compensatory and punitive damages. On Aug. 4, a jury in the Texas trial awarded the parents of one of the children killed in the mass shooting more than $4 million in compensatory damages and another $45.2 million in punitive damages. The current trial in Connecticut could be financially ruinous for Mr. Jones because of what is allowed by state law.
Mark Barden, whose son Daniel perished at Sandy Hook, described his surviving daughter learning about letters the family had received from people who said they had urinated on Daniel’s grave and wanted to dig up his body.
Francine and David Wheeler, whose son Ben died, said their longtime careers as performers and their surviving child’s sense of safety were upended when conspiracy theorists targeted them as “crisis actors.”
Carlee Soto Parisi, whose sister Vicki Soto, a teacher, was murdered at Sandy Hook, described how Matthew Mills, a Sept. 11 denier hailed as a “soldier” by Mr. Jones on his show, disrupted a charity race in memory of Ms. Soto, telling family members there that Ms. Soto had not died.
Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the Sandy Hook principal who also was killed, described threats of rape.
Jennifer Hensel, who lost her daughter Avielle Richman, told jurors she scans parking lots for threats and checks the back seat of her car, fibbing to her toddler that she was making sure the family dog had not climbed inside.
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Alex Jones lost by default last year four defamation lawsuits filed by the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims.Credit…Mike Segar/Reuters
Over two days of testimony central to this case, Robbie and Alissa Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed, described years of death threats and confrontation after Mr. Jones singled out Mr. Parker by name and urged his audience to “investigate” him. For years Mr. Jones replayed video of a news conference Mr. Parker gave in tribute to his daughter, calling him an “actor” and the event “disgusting.”
Mr. Parker did not know he was the first Sandy Hook relative to speak publicly when he agreed to meet what he thought would be one reporter in front of his church in Newtown. Faced with a sea of cameras and reporters, he gave a short, nervous laugh before launching into an emotional reminiscence of Emilie as a big sister, proficient artist and empathetic 6-year-old. Mr. Jones seized on that laugh to repeatedly attack Mr. Parker.
It was “a full-on assault,” Alissa Parker told the jury. “The words that people were using were so scary and horrific, and just the things they were saying about my sweet daughter,” she said, sobbing. “Things like ‘watch your back, we’re watching you,’ and ‘we’re coming after you.’”
“They called Emilie a whore,” Mrs. Parker said. “Just the most horrific things you could ever even imagine. Just calling Robbie a liar, and that we’re going to burn in hell for what we’ve done.’”
The threats hung over the Parkers as they planned Emilie’s funeral. “What do we do if somebody shows up?” Mr. Parker told the jurors, recalling that time. Minutes before Emilie’s services were to begin, he found his wife hiding in a coat closet outside the room that held Emilie’s coffin. “She was curled up, just sobbing, and saying, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’”
Mr. Parker spoke about an episode in 2016, when he, Mrs. Parker and their two surviving daughters traveled to Seattle to attend a charity event that included a tribute to Emilie. Mr. Parker dropped his family at a hotel and parked the car. While walking to rejoin them, he was accosted by a man who spewed profanity and called him a liar and a profiteer. Mr. Parker marveled that 3,000 miles and four years removed from the shooting, a stranger had recognized and targeted him on the street.
Late last year, Mr. Jones lost by default four separate defamation lawsuits filed by the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims, who had endured years of torment and threats.
The families’ sweeping victory set in motion three trials (two of the cases were combined) for juries to decide how much Mr. Jones must pay the families in compensatory and punitive damages.
In the first trial, a jury in Austin, Texas, in August awarded Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, parents of Jesse Lewis, nearly $50 million, though Texas law caps that verdict at far less.
In the current trial, the second of the three, families of eight Sandy Hook victims sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut, where state law allows for a potentially ruinous financial verdict.
On Thursday Judge Barbara Bellis of Connecticut Superior Court provided the jury with lengthy instructions. She told them to take all the time they needed to decide on fair compensation to the families for a list of violations Mr. Jones was liable for, including damage to their reputations, invasion of privacy and emotional distress.
Source: nytimes.com
