Austin, Texas-
A Texas jury on Thursday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy who died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially responsible for repeatedly claiming that the deadliest school shooting in US history was a hoax.
The Austin jury is yet to decide how much the Infowars host should pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut.
The parents had sought compensation of at least $150 million for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’s attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8, one dollar for each of the compensation charges they are considering, and Jones himself said that any award of more than $2 million “would sink us.”
It is likely not the last trial against Jones, who was not in the courtroom, for his claims that the attack was carried out in order to increase gun controls. A Connecticut judge ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by the families of other victims and an FBI agent who worked on the case.
Jones’ lead attorney, Andino Reynal, winked at his co-counsel before leaving the courtroom. He declined to comment on the verdict.
Outside court, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Mark Bankston, insisted the $4.11 million amount was not a disappointment, noting that it was only part of the damages Jones will have to pay.
The jury returns Friday to hear more evidence about Jones and his company’s finances.
“We’re not done yet, folks,” Bankston said. “We knew going into this case needed to be shooting for the moon for the jury to understand that we were serious and passionate. After tomorrow, he will owe much more”.
The total amount awarded in this case could set a benchmark for the other lawsuits against Jones and underscores the financial threat he faces. It also raises new questions about the ability of Infowars, which has been banned from YouTube, Spotify and Twitter for hate speech, to continue operating, even though the company’s finances remain unclear.
Jones, who described the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, admitted during the trial that the attack was “100 percent real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it. But Heslin and Lewis told the jury that an apology would not be enough and asked them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.
The parents testified Tuesday about how they have endured a decade of trauma, inflicted first by their son’s murder and what followed: shots fired at a home, phone and online threats, and street harassment by strangers. They said the threats and harassment were fueled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread to his followers through his Infowars website.
A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffer from “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” inflicted by ongoing trauma, similar to what a soldier in war or a victim of child abuse might experience.
At one point in his testimony, Lewis looked directly at Jones, who was sitting just 10 feet away.
“I find it so unbelievable that we have to do this, that we have to beg you, punish you, to stop lying,” Lewis told Jones.
Barry Covert, a First Amendment attorney from Buffalo, New York, said the $4 million in compensatory damages was lower than he would have expected given the evidence and testimony.
“But I don’t think Jones can take this as a win,” he added. “The fact is that $4 million is significant, even if we would have thought it would be a little higher.”
Juries often refuse to award punitive damages when deciding on a compensation figure. But when they do choose to do so, the punitive amount is usually higher, Covert said. He said he hopes the parents’ attorneys will argue that jurors should send the message that no one should benefit from defamation.
“They’ll want jurors to send the message that you can’t make a quarter-billion profit on harming someone and say you’re just going to take the damage loss in court,” Covert said.
Jones was the only witness to testify in his defense. And he was attacked withering by plaintiffs’ attorneys during cross-examination, as they reviewed Jones’s own video claims about Sandy Hook over the years, accusing him of lying and trying to hide evidence, including text messages and emails. emails about the attack. It also included internal emails sent by an Infowars employee saying “this Sandy Hook thing is killing us.”
At one point, Jones was told that his lawyers had mistakenly sent Bankston the last two years of text messages from Jones’s cell phone. Bankston said in court Thursday that the US House Jan. 6 committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol requested the records and that he intends to comply.
And shortly after Jones declared “I don’t use email,” Jones was shown one coming from his address and another from an Infowars business official telling Jones that the company had made $800,000 gross on the sale. of your products in a single day. which would amount to almost $300 million in a year.
Jones’s media company, Free Speech Systems, which is the parent company of Infowars, filed for bankruptcy during the two-week trial.
Associated Press writer Michael Tarm in Chicago contributed to this report.