WATERBURY, Conn., Sept 13 (Reuters) – A lawyer for the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting told a Connecticut jury on Tuesday that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will never stop profiting from pernicious lies unless he pays up for his lies about the massacre. The attorney, Christopher Mattei, made his assessment during opening statements Tuesday, nearly a decade after 20 children and six staff members were killed Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In Jones’ second trial related to the massacre, jurors will decide how much damages he owes 13 family members of the victims as well as an FBI agent for claiming the massacre was a hoax. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Jones’ trial in a court in Waterbury, Connecticut, about 20 miles from Newtown, comes a month after a jury in Austin, Texas, awarded two parents $49.3 million in a similar case. Mattei told jurors it was important to stop Jones and the right-wing Infowars brand from “preying on people who are helpless” and encouraging years of harassment from Jones’ followers. “They knew the harassment was happening, but the lies were very profitable,” Mattei said. He said Infowars, which is based in Austin, attracted millions of followers with false claims about Sandy Hook and made up to $800,000 a day selling supplements, doomsday supplies and other products. Jones’ attorney, Norman Pattis, countered during his opening statement that the families are “increasing their damages for political reasons” and see a large damages award as a “weapon” to silence Infowars. “We’re going to ask you to disarm them,” Pattis told jurors. Jones did not attend the start of the trial, which is expected to last five weeks, but Pattis said he would testify. Plaintiffs sued Jones and parent company Infowars Free Speech Systems LLC in 2018. They said the harassment was carried out by people who believed Jones’ false claims that the government staged the Sandy Hook shooting with crisis actors as a pretext to confiscate guns and that families faked their children’s deaths. Jones has since admitted that the shooting took place.
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Some families in the gallery clutched each other’s hands and fought back tears as the first plaintiff to testify, FBI agent Bill Aldenberg, described the shooting scene and the death threats families received as they prepared for burials. “It overwhelms your senses. It’s horrible,” he said. Another plaintiff, Carlee Soto Parisi, tearfully described her sister’s death at Sandy Hook and the subsequent flood of social media posts saying she was a crisis actor. “It’s painful, it’s devastating, it’s crippling. You can’t breathe properly,” he said. Adam Lanza, the gunman, used a Remington Bushmaster rifle as he opened fire inside the school after fatally shooting his mother at home. The massacre ended when Lanza killed himself as he heard police sirens approaching. Jurors are charged solely with determining how much Jones and Free Speech Systems must pay for spreading lies about the massacre. A judge entered a default judgment in the case in November after Jones failed to comply with court orders. Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy in July. That would normally protect the company from lawsuits, but it agreed to go to trial in August. At a hearing Tuesday in the bankruptcy case, a judge denied Free Speech Systems’ request to reimburse Jones for travel and security detail expenses. The $49.3 million award in Austin could be significantly reduced because it consists mostly of non-pecuniary damages meant to punish Jones for his conduct. An attorney for Jones said he would seek to reduce the $45.2 million punitive damages component to $1.5 million, citing a Texas law that imposes a cap. The parents’ attorneys said the cap does not apply and Jones will have to pay the full amount. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Report by Jack Queen. Editing: Noeleen Walder, Mark Porter, Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
