Jury reaches verdict on how much Alex Jones should pay Sandy Hook victims

A Connecticut jury awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to 15 plaintiffs defamed by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones when the InfoWars host called the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax staged by actors following a script written by the government to build support for gun control.

With the plaintiffs sobbing in gallery, the clerk read out the verdict in which the jury decided compensatory damages for both slander and for emotional distress.

The compensatory damages total about a billion dollars, far exceeding the award in a prior case in Texas.

The jury also awarded attorneys fees and costs.

The plaintiffs, relatives of victims and an FBI agent who responded to the scene, testified that they were tormented by Jones' followers who believed his lies about the massacre. The families said they were harassed and threatened in the decade since the shooting.
Jones testified he believed at the time the shooting might have been staged but he has since said he now believes it’s real. He declined to apologize to the families.

A judge last year found Jones and Infowars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, liable in the defamation lawsuit, with plaintiffs that include an FBI agent who responded to the scene and eight families of victims that Jones called actors.

Prosecutors had asked that Jones pay $550 million to a group of Sandy Hook parents, who claim the InfoWars host spread lies about the mass shooting that killed 26 people, including 20 elementary school children.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Chris Mattei, asked the six jurors to "think about the scale of the defamation," citing as one example Jones' claim the families, "faked their 6- or 7-year-old's death."

Defense attorney Norm Pattis told jurors it was not their job to bankrupt Jones so he would stop broadcasting lies.

Pattis said he represents a "despised human being" but balked at the half-billion-dollar sum proposed by the plaintiffs' attorney.

"It would take a person earning $100,000 a year hundreds of years to make $550 million," Pattis said during his closing statement.

Jones faces a third, and final, trial that could result in another hefty damage award.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/jury-reaches-verdict-alex-jones-pay-sandy-hook/story?id=91399930

 

How could he ever pay this off? And he still has another trial to go

he is essentially ruined now

 

Why do people refuse to realize that there are consequences for the things u say? Now “freedom of speech” means u can just say whatever

 

just to give an idea of just some of the stuff that was happening to these families

The Connecticut 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.

He called the proceedings a "kangaroo court," mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs' lawyer an ambulance chaser and labeled the case an affront to free speech rights. He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business.