Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will be back on trial Tuesday facing more family members of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, weeks after a Texas jury ruled he and his company must pay the parents of a student nearly 50 million dollars for defaming the student’s father and causing emotional distress to both parents.
A jury of three men and three women in Connecticut will now determine how much money Jones and his company Free Speech Systems (FSS) must pay to other families of more students and employees killed in the 2012 shooting, which Jones and his colleagues told their audience a joke.
Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled in November 2021 that Jones and FSS were liable for defamation of the 15 plaintiffs in that lawsuit, primarily because Jones and his company failed to cooperate in delivering documents to discovery process.
Plaintiffs in three lawsuits against Jones and FSS, including family members of eight students and school employees and a former FBI agent who responded to the scene, have all joined the trial that begins this week.
Several of the family members are expected to be in the courtroom for the trial and testify in the case, according to Chris Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
Jones is also expected to testify at some point, but it is unclear if he will be present in the courtroom during the trial.
The plaintiffs claim their reputations have been damaged and they have endured years of emotional distress from harassment and public scorn as a result of Jones’ coverage of the shooting, according to court documents.
They also say Jones and FSS violated the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) by profiting from promoting his narrative that the shooting was a hoax.
Connecticut law typically limits punitive damages in a civil lawsuit to the cost of court costs and expenses, but Judge Bellis could rule that plaintiffs are entitled to more than a CUTPA claim.
Although the Texas court ruled that Jones and his company should pay the plaintiffs in that lawsuit nearly $50 million in punitive and punitive damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, Jones’ attorney objected to punitive damages under the law of the state of Texas, which prescribes the punishment. compensation. The final award amount in this case has yet to be determined by the court, and Jones’ attorneys have said they will appeal.
One of the plaintiffs in that trial, Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was just six years old when he was killed, spoke directly to Jones while she testified.
“In some way you have negatively affected every day of my life – almost since Jesse was murdered. Since 2013 when your videos were coming out,” Lewis said.
“This is not staged as one of your people said. This is a real fact. It seems so incredible that we should do this, that we should beg you—not just beg you, but chastise you to stop lying, saying it’s a hoax. It happened. It’s like surreal what’s happening.”
In a deposition for one of the lawsuits, Jones acknowledged that the shooting was real and blamed his claims that it was a hoax on “psychosis.”
“I never intentionally tried to hurt you. I never even said your name until this case came to court. I didn’t even know who you were until a few years ago when this all started. The internet had a lot of questions. I had questions,” Jones said while on the witness stand at the Texas trial last month. “And that’s really been my big frustration is that people have said that I’m trying to personally hurt them or that they come after me when I question every big event.”
During a nearly three-hour pretrial hearing last week, Judge Bellis ruled on several issues that Jones and his legal team can and cannot speak to jurors, often referring to moments from the widely publicized Texas trial. .
“I’m not going to have that kind of trouble. This is a different courtroom, different law, different everything,” Judge Bellis said, referring to the judge in the Texas case who reprimanded Jones multiple times for making improper or false claims before jurors.
Bellis also said she will question Jones outside the presence of the jury before he testifies in Connecticut to confirm he understands the parameters of her orders.
“I’m not going to have a situation where we have to now derail in the middle of the trial and have to deal with a contempt of court situation with your client where he’s blatantly disobeying an order,” Judge Bellis told Jones. Lawyer.
“If he has to write it 10 times over and over until he gets it, then that’s what he should do,” Bellis said.
Jones’ defense cannot argue to the jury that liability for damages in this trial is unfair or violates Jones’ First Amendment rights, Bellis ruled.
“There will be no evidence or argument that the Jones defendants met their discovery obligations by making a substantial production nor can they attack at the trial court level during the jury trial that the verdict was unjust,” Bellis said.
The judge also ruled that jurors cannot hear about a $73 million settlement reached in February between major gun maker Remington and some plaintiffs from that trial, a point Jones’ attorney wanted to raise at trial.
Over defense objections, Judge Bellis also said she would allow testimony from an expert witness for the plaintiffs about Jones’ audience and the political leanings and patterns of behavior that might have led some members of that audience to accept the Jones’s conspiracy theory that the elementary 2012 school shootings weren’t real.
