Six Connecticut jurors — or shall we call them justice actors? — just ordered Alex Emerick Jones to pay $965 million total to 14 parents and siblings of children and teachers murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012, and one smeared FBI agent. America’s First Amendment free speech protections have always allowed the punishment of those who libel and slander. In this case, Jones has already been convicted of defamation for calling family members of murdered kids crisis actors, subjecting them to waves of torment beyond the unimaginable pain they were already enduring.
The only question was how much that defamation and slander and emotional distress should cost him. Now we know: nearly a billion dollars. Amen.
Along the way, of course, Jones has tried to plead poverty. The protestations have been every bit as believable as his claims that he was not smearing the families of Newtown but merely engaging in good-faith, no-harm-intended conspiracy-mongering.
