In order to establish how much Alex Jones will have to pay in damages to the parents of a child slain in the fatal 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, a Texas jury started deliberations on Thursday.
The families of Sandy Hook victims claimed that Jones’ false claims that the tragedy was a “giant hoax” caused them undue emotional distress and that his followers had seriously harassed them as a result. Jones is a well-known conspiracy theorist and far-right broadcaster best known for his work with the fake news website InfoWars and its namesake talk show. Last year, he was the target of numerous defamation lawsuits.
The defamation lawsuit that Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis first brought against Jones and his firm in 2018 has now reached its conclusion in Austin, Texas, where the headquarters of Free Speech Systems, the parent company of InfoWars and Jones’ media empire, are located.
The parents of 6-year-old Jesse, who was one of the 20 kids and six adults were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Heslin and Lewis, are requesting at least $150 million in compensatory damages.
The Texas jury will vote once again to decide whether Heslin and Lewis receive further punitive damages after deciding how much of that total they will really be awarded.
The first of several damage trials Jones will participate in over the next few months is these hearings. The other ones are related to other defamation lawsuits filed by Sandy Hook shooting victims’ families. One lawsuit, brought against Jones in Texas by Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of a second child killed at the Connecticut elementary school, demands compensation for Jones’ continuous denials of the massacre.
Nearly a dozen additional families with loved ones killed in the attack are included in another lawsuit that was filed in Connecticut. These families also filed defamation suits against Jones, alleging that he spread untruths about the disaster in an effort “to enhance his audience and his sales.”
Additionally, they claim that Jones secretly transferred money from Free Speech Systems before the business recently requested federal bankruptcy protection. Jones was explicitly chastised by the presiding Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, who stated that the bankruptcy status had not yet been established, despite the fact that Jones had claimed to be bankrupt in front of the jury during the damages trial in Heslin and Lewis’ case.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School victims’ families have already lost each of their lawsuits against Jones, and the damages hearings this year are solely intended to determine the financial amounts he must pay each plaintiff. Using his history of “bad faith and callous contempt” for court procedures over the course of the lawsuits, District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued rare default judgments in September finding him liable for defamation and emotional distress in the Texas proceedings. Following suit, Judge Barbara Bellis issued a comparable default ruling in the Connecticut case that November.
Jones is notorious for using his platform as the founder and public face of InfoWars to spread false information regarding horrific national disasters like the 9/11 attacks and other mass killings in addition to Sandy Hook. His claims that the Sandy Hook shooting was a government “hoax” and a “false flag” orchestrated by the “deep state” in an effort to tighten gun laws across the country were featured in digital and video content for years. He asserted that the shooting and the following media coverage were “manufactured,” and he characterized the bereaved relatives as government “actors” who served the interests of whoever was allegedly behind the plot.
Heslin and Lewis spoke in court this week, calling their lives “a living nightmare” as a result of Jones’ fabrications and the ensuing verbal and physical abuse from his supporters. They cited occasions in which followers of Jones sent them threatening letters and fired shots at their house and car. Jones acknowledged in his own evidence to the family in court on Tuesday that he was “100% real” about the Sandy Hook massacre.
“Especially since I’ve met the parents. It’s 100% real,” he said, and replied in the affirmative when his attorney asked if he understood that it was “absolutely irresponsible” to push false claims about the shooting. “They (the media) won’t let me take it back,” Jones said.