Alex Jones to pay $965M to Sandy Hook families
Newslooks- WATERBURY, Conn. (AP)
Jurors indicated Wednesday they have reached a verdict in conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Connecticut defamation trial.
The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday. The jury awarded nearly $1 billion to the Sandy Hook families and a first responder who sued Alex Jones.
The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.
It came in a lawsuit filed by the relatives of five children and three educators killed in the mass shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders to the scene. A Texas jury in August awarded nearly $50 million to the parents of another slain child.
A jury has awarded compensatory damages to Sandy Hook families.
This is a significant victory for the plaintiffs.
Some plaintiffs hugged in the courtroom after the verdict was read. Jones wasn’t there, but live video from the court played on a split screen on his Infowars show.
“Hey, folks, don’t go buying big homes,” he said.
The trial featured tearful testimony from parents and siblings of the victims, who told about how they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show.
Strangers showed up at their homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media. Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house. Mark Barden told of how conspiracy theorists had urinated on the grave of his 7-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin.
Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But both in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant.
The Connecticut jury, made up of six people, was asked to decide how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his company Free Speech Systems should pay for defamation, invasion of privacy and emotional distress damages to the families who lost a child in the 2012 shooting.
Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs, urged jurors to award at least a half a billion dollars for having permanently damaged the lives of his clients.
The figure, he said, would represent the more than 550 million online impressions Jones’ Sandy Hook lie allegedly received online.
Jones and his company were found liable for damages last year. The six-person jury is tasked with determining how much the Infowars show host should pay to 15 plaintiffs — including victims’ families and an FBI agent — for calling the 2012 massacre a hoax.
The jury has been instructed to arrive at two compensatory damages amounts per plaintiff: one sum for defamation damages and another for emotional distress damages. Jurors also will decide whether Jones should pay punitive damages; the judge would decide the amounts later.
Each compensatory damages amount has to be at least $1, but there is no cap. The plaintiffs’ lawyers have suggested total damages could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Jones has bashed the trial as a “kangaroo court,” described it as an affront to free speech rights, and called the judge a “tyrant.” His lawyer told the jury that any damages awarded should be minimal.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Jurors revisited testimony from the husband of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim as a third full day of deliberations began Wednesday in conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Connecticut defamation trial.
At the jury’s request, court began with a replay of a roughly hourlong audio recording of William Sherlach’s trial testimony. His wife, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, was among the 26 people killed in the 2012 shooting.
Her husband is among the lawsuit’s 15 plaintiffs, who include victims’ relatives and an FBI agent. All testified about being harassed by people who say the shooting was staged in a plot for more gun control.
Jones and his company were found liable for damages last year. The six-person jury is tasked with determining how much the Infowars show host should pay to the plaintiffs victims’ families and the FBI agent for calling the massacre a hoax.
William Sherlach, who goes by Bill, testified that he worried for his and his family’s safety because of the shooting deniers’ vitriol.
Sherlach testified that he saw online posts falsely positing that the shooting was a hoax; that his wife never existed; that she didn’t have the credentials to be a school psychologist; that his family was actually named Goldberg and lived in Florida; and that he was part of a financial cabal and somehow involved with the school shooter’s father.
Sherlach didn’t testify about receiving any harassing messages directly, though he also said that he didn’t have social media accounts or use email. Nor did he mention anything that Jones said specifically.
The jury has been instructed to arrive at two compensatory damages amounts per plaintiff: one sum for defamation damages and another for emotional distress damages. Jurors also will decide whether Jones should pay punitive damages; the judge would decide the amounts later.
Each compensatory damages amount has to be at least $1, but there is no cap. The plaintiffs’ lawyers have suggested total damages could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The plaintiffs include an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight victims who died. Twenty children and six educators were killed.
Jones has bashed the trial as a “kangaroo court,” described it as an affront to free speech rights, and called the judge a “tyrant.” His lawyer told the jury that any damages awarded should be minimal.
