A Connecticut jury resumed deliberations Tuesday in its effort to decide on how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay for spreading the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged by “crisis actors.”
Roughly an hour into their second full day of discussions in the defamation trial in Waterbury, jurors asked for help interpreting a sentence in their instructions on determining damages. In response, they were advised to consider the lengthy instructions as a whole.
Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable for damages last year to 15 plaintiffs in the lawsuit for broadcasting a conspiracy theory that no children died and that the victims' relatives were part of an elaborate hoax.
Twenty six people died in the mass shooting at the school in Newtown, Connecticut. Jones repeatedly told his millions of followers on his Infowars website show that the shooting didn't happen.
In often-emotional and tearful testimony, victims' relatives and the FBI agent said they have been tormented and threatened — in person, by mail and on social media — by people who believed those lies. The plaintiffs' lawyers have suggested to the jury that a just verdict could be in the hundred of millions of dollars.
The trial began Sept. 13. On the witness stand, Jones said he was “done saying I'm sorry” for calling the shooting a hoax. Outside of the courthouse he's called the legal proceedings a “show trial” aimed at putting him out of business.
In a similar trial in Texas, a jury in August ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of one of the children killed in the shooting, though that award could wind up being substantially reduced. A third such trial is expected to begin near the end of the year in Texas.
