A Texas jury on Friday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of a boy who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, adding to the $4.1 million he must pay for the suffering he caused them. by claiming for years that the nation’s deadliest school shooting was a hoax.
The $49.3 million total is less than the $150 million sought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting. deadliest in American history. But the trial is the first time Jones has been held financially responsible for planting lies about the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut.
Read more: Alex Jones case: Sandy Hook family seeks punitive damages on top of $4.1 million awarded
After the verdict, Lewis said Jones has been held accountable. He said that when he took the stand and looked Jones in the eye, he thought of his son who was credited with saving lives by yelling “run” when the killer stopped in his rampage.
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1:58 Jury rules Alex Jones owes millions in damages in Sandy Hook defamation case Jury rules Alex Jones owes millions in damages in Sandy Hook defamation case
“He stood up to the bully Adam Lanza and saved the lives of nine of his teammates,” Lewis said. “I hope I’ve done justice with that incredible courage when I was able to stand up to Alex Jones, who is also a bully. I hope this inspires others to do the same.”
Earlier this week, Jones testified that any award above $2 million “would sink us.” His company Free Speech Systems, which is the parent company of Infowars, filed for bankruptcy protection during the first week of the trial.
Punitive damages are intended to punish defendants for particularly heinous conduct, over and above the monetary compensation awarded to the people they injured. A high punitive award is also seen as an opportunity for juries to send a broader social message and a way to deter others from the same heinous conduct in the future.
Barry Covert, a First Amendment attorney in Buffalo, New York, with no connection to the Jones case, said Friday’s high punitive award added to Thursday’s compensatory award is “a stunning loss for Jones.”
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“At $50 million in total, the jury has sent a huge, strong message that this behavior will not be tolerated,” Covert said. “Anyone on a show like this who knowingly tells lies, the juries will not tolerate that.”
Future jurors in other pending Sandy Hook trials could look to the damage amounts in this case as a benchmark, Covert said. And if other jurors do, Covert said, “it could put Jones out of business.”
The family’s lawyers had urged jurors to hand down a financial penalty that would force Inforwars to close.
4:11 Alex Jones Admits Sandy Hook Shooting 100% Real, Lawyers Accidentally Reveal His Phone Record Alex Jones Admits Sandy Hook Shooting 100% Real, Lawyers Accidentally Revealing His Phone Record
“You have the ability to prevent this man from doing this again,” Wesley Ball, an attorney for the parents, told the jury Friday. “Send the message to those who want to do the same: speech is free. Lies, you pay.”
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An economist said Friday that Jones and the company are worth as much as $270 million, suggesting Jones was still making money.
Bernard Pettingill, who was hired by the plaintiffs to look into Jones’ net worth, said records show Jones withdrew $62 million for himself in 2021, when default judgments were issued in the lawsuits against him.
“That number represents, in my opinion, a net worth,” Pettingill said. “He has money in a bank account somewhere.”
The money that flows through Jones’ companies eventually goes to him, said Pettingill, who added that he has testified in roughly 1,500 cases during his career.
But Jones’ lawyers said their client had already learned his lesson and asked for leniency, saying the punitive amount should be less than $300,000.
Read more: Alex Jones ordered to pay more than $4 million in damages to Sandy Hook parents
“You’ve already sent a message. A message for the first time to a talk show host, to all talk show hosts, that their level of care needs to change,” said Jones’ lead attorney, Andino Reynal.
Jones, who was briefly in the courtroom Friday but not there for the verdict, still faces two other defamation lawsuits from Sandy Hook families in Texas and Connecticut that threatened his personal wealth and the ‘media empire.
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Attorneys for the Sandy Hook families suing Jones say he has tried to hide evidence of his true wealth in several shell companies.
During his testimony, Jones was confronted with a memo from one of his business managers outlining a single day’s gross revenue of $800,000 from the sale of vitamin supplements and other products through his website , which would approach nearly $300 million in a year. Jones called it a record sales day.
Jones, who has 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 jurors 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 told jurors how they have endured a decade of trauma, first inflicted by their son’s murder and what followed: gunshots at home, online and phone 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 Infowars.
A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffer from “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” caused by ongoing trauma, similar to what a soldier at war or a victim of child abuse might experience.
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6:26 Sandy Hook victim’s father says Alex Jones’ apology ‘useless’ in defamation trial.
Throughout the trial, Jones has been his typically bombastic self, talking about conspiracies on the witness stand, during impromptu press conferences and on his show. His erratic behavior is unusual by courtroom standards, and the judge has reprimanded him, telling him at one point: “This is not your show.”
The trial has also drawn attention from outside Austin.
Bankston told the court Thursday that the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol uprising has requested records on Jones’ phone that Jones’ lawyers mistakenly turned over to plaintiffs . Bankston later said he planned to comply with the committee’s request.
Read more: ‘Coward’ Alex Jones made my life hell, Sandy Hook victim’s father testifies
Last month, the Jan. 6 committee displayed graphic and violent text messages and played videos of right-wing figures, including Jones, and others promising that Jan. 6 would be the day they would fight for Trump.
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The committee first subpoenaed Jones in November, demanding a deposition and documents related to his efforts to spread misinformation about the 2020 election and a rally on the day of the attack.
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