He has steadily refused to participate in the discovery process for each of the three lawsuits - the court-mandated part of the case where the prosecution and defense have to turn over all relevant documentation to their opponent. Jones has spent years fighting his way to the courtroom. Jones already lost the case by refusing to participate in his own defense The case’s shocking revelations, which now include a potential link to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol, are reminders that the kind of zealous paranoid thinking Jones encourages can have dangerous and unintended consequences.
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Plaintiffs sought $150 million in total damages - what might be deemed a reasonable amount given Jones could be making as much as double that in a given year - and many onlookers are viewing the trial as a major moment of reckoning for Jones.īut while Jones will finally be forced to pay, literally, for his actions, the lasting impact of his years of conspiracy-theory mongering may be impossible to quantify. Jones has already lost all three cases by default judgment the trials are about determining how much money he will pay the survivors. This Texas suit, brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, is the first of the three cases to be heard. In 2019, Jones finally admitted that the shooting was real, but he has continued to spread misinformation about the parents even up to and during the current trial. As a result of the claims, Infowars fans harassed, stalked, and threatened the families for years, pushing some into hiding.Ī total of 10 families eventually sued Jones beginning in 2018, bringing two suits in Texas, where Jones runs Infowars, and one in Connecticut, where the shooting occurred. Jones spent years spreading conspiracy theories on Infowars, his far-right media company spanning radio, TV, and web, in segments with titles like “Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed.” Among his claims: that Sandy Hook was a “false flag,” that it didn’t happen, and that the grieving families of the 20 children and six adults killed in the 2012 mass school shooting were actors. The biggest? A major courtroom bombshell on the last day of testimony in which Jones’s lawyer accidentally handed over the entire contents of his phone to the prosecution, revealing the extent of Jones’s deception - a snafu that also inadvertently tipped off the House January 6 committee.
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Jones’s first trial, held in Austin, marked the second time this year that a high-profile defamation case has captured the public’s attention, following the Depp-Heard trial, and the week-long Jones trial has delivered shocking moments that even longtime Court TV aficionados might not have expected. The wildly disparate financial awards of the two lawsuits reflect both the ultimately subjective nature of a trial by jury and the intensely chaotic nature of the Jones case - the first trial in particular. The third Sandy Hook trial will likely be held in Texas later this year. (Prior to this, the record amount was $274 million, awarded in a 2017 suit.) Punitive damages, which are typically awarded in cases where the jury finds significant harm has occurred, and which can range up to four times the amount of compensatory damages, have not yet been declared. That’s far less than the $150 million they were seeking but still a decisive statement against Jones.īut in the second trial, a Connecticut jury has awarded a total of $965 million in compensatory damages to eight families - a historic amount for damages in a defamation lawsuit. The first, wildly unpredictable seven-day hearing ended in plaintiffs Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, being awarded $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages. After years of delays and obstacles, two of three defamation lawsuits against Infowars’ Alex Jones by the parents of Sandy Hook victims have finally come to trial.
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