Alex Jones ordered to pay Sandy Hook parents more than $4M
A Texas jury on Thursday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for repeatedly claiming the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history was a hoax. The Austin jury must still decide how much the Infowars host must pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut. The parents had sought at least $150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’ attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8 — one dollar for each of the compensation charges they are considering — and Jones himself said any award over $2 million “would sink us.” It likely won’t be the last judgment against Jones over his claims that the attack was staged in the interests of increasing gun controls. A Connecticut judge has ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by other victims’ families and an FBI agent who worked on the case. The Texas award could set a marker for other cases against Jones and underlines the financial threat he’s facing. It also raises new questions about the ability of Infowars — which has been banned from YouTube, Spotify, and Twitter for hate speech — to continue operating, although the company’s finances remain unclear. Jones, who has portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was “100% real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it. But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through. The parents testified Tuesday about how they’ve endured a decade of trauma, inflicted first by the murder of their son and what followed: gunshots fired at a home, online and phone threats, and harassment on the street by strangers. They said the threats and harassment were all fueled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread to his followers via his website Infowars. A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffer from “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” inflicted by ongoing trauma, similar to what might be experienced by a soldier at war or a child abuse victim. At one point in her testimony, Lewis looked directly at Jones, who was sitting barely 10 feet away. “It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this — that we have to implore you, to punish you — to get you to stop lying,” Lewis told Jones. Jones was the only witness to testify in his defense. And he came under withering attack from the plaintiff’s attorneys under cross-examination, as they reviewed Jones’ own video claims about Sandy Hook over the years, and accused him of lying and trying to hide evidence, including text messages and emails about the attack. It also included internal emails sent by an Infowars employee that said, “this Sandy Hook stuff is killing us.” At one point, Jones was told that his attorneys had mistakenly sent Mark Bankston, who is representing Heslin and Lewis, the last two years’ worth of texts from Jones’ cellphone. Bankston said in court Thursday that the U.S. House January 6 committee investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has requested the records and that he intends to comply. And shortly after Jones declared, “I don’t use email,” Jones was shown one that came from his address, and another one from an Infowars business officer telling Jones that the company had earned $800,000 gross in selling its products in a single day, which would amount to nearly $300 million in a year. Jones’ media company Free Speech Systems, which is Infowars’ parent company, filed for bankruptcy during the two-week trial. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
Supreme Court lets Sandy Hook shooting lawsuit go forward
The Supreme Court said Tuesday a survivor and relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting can pursue their lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used to kill 26 people. The justices rejected an appeal from Remington Arms that argued it should be shielded by a 2005 federal law preventing most lawsuits against firearms manufacturers when their products are used in crimes. The court’s order allows the lawsuit filed in Connecticut state court by a survivor and relatives of nine victims who died at the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012 to go forward. The lawsuit says the Madison, North Carolina-based company should never have sold a weapon as dangerous as the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle to the public. Gunman Adam Lanza used it to kill 20 first graders and six educators. It also alleges Remington targeted younger, at-risk males in marketing and product placement in violent video games. Lanza was 20 years old. Lanza earlier shot his mother to death at their Newtown home and killed himself as police arrived at the school. The rifle was legally owned by his mother. The Connecticut Supreme Court had earlier ruled 4-3 that the lawsuit could proceed for now, citing an exemption in the federal law. The decision overturned a ruling by a trial court judge who dismissed the lawsuit based on the 2005 federal law, named the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The federal law has been criticized by gun control advocates as being too favorable to gun-makers, and it has been used to bar lawsuits over other mass killings. The case is being watched by gun control advocates, gun rights supporters and gun manufacturers across the country, as it has the potential to provide a roadmap for victims of other mass shootings to circumvent the federal law and sue the makers of firearm. The 2005 federal law has been cited by other courts that rejected lawsuits against gun-makers and dealers in other high-profile shooting attacks, including the 2012 Colorado movie theater shooting and the Washington, D.C., sniper shootings in 2002. The National Rifle Association, 10 mainly Republican-led states and 22 Republicans in Congress were among those urging the court to jump into the case and end the lawsuit against Remington. By Mark Sherman Associated Press. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Dems honor Fla. nightclub, Sandy Hook victims
The Latest on the Democratic National Convention: Democrats are paying tribute to the victims of the June attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Christine Leinonen tells the crowd at the Democratic convention that her son – Christopher “Drew” Leinonen – always brought people together and started a gay-straight alliance in school. He was one of the 49 patrons killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. She says her son’s grandparents met in a Japanese internment camp “so it was in his DNA that love always trumps hate.” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy says he’s “furious” about the lack of progress on gun control in the years since 20 first-graders and six adults were killed at the Connecticut school. Murphy says Republicans in Congress have done “absolutely nothing to prevent the next massacre.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Jac VerSteeg: Keep gun owners from killing themselves
In America guns now kill as many people as cars. The facts behind this trend offer an opportunity for cooperation between gun rights factions and gun safety factions. The headline – guns kill as many as cars – at first looks like a slam dunk condemnation of rising gun violence. That’s not the case. The underlying cause is not a spike in gun homicides. Rather, it is a steady reduction in the number of motor vehicle deaths. (By the way, in Florida vehicular fatalities still outnumber gun deaths.) There’s another wrinkle in the national stats. Of the 30,000 people who die from gun violence every year, about 20,000 are suicides. Therein lies the opportunity for agreement between pro-gun and anti-gun factions. Both should want to reduce suicide rates by providing resources for mental health. Gun rights advocates have conceded – at least, some have – that guns should be kept out of the hands of the mentally ill. When there is an attack such as the murders committed at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, gun rights forces are eager to blame the shooter’s mental illness rather than the firearms used to kill, in this case, three people including a police officer. But for every high-profile case like that, there are thousands of gun deaths that barely are noticed except by the family and friends of the victims. I’m talking, of course, about those 20,000 suicides by gun every year. Suicide is an extreme symptom of mental illness. One reason suicide is so little noted is that it is clouded in stigma and shame. News media traditionally have not reported on lone suicides out of consideration for the surviving friends and family members. Suicide has been seen as a private matter. But not always. As the Sun Sentinel reported, 56-year-old Clive A. Muir shot himself to death on New Year’s Day. But not before he also shot two assistant managers, one fatally, who worked at the Boston Market in Tamarac where Muir had worked before being fired last fall. It is impossible to know whether mental health intervention could have prevented Muir’s attacks and suicide. The same is true of every specific suicide. But it is a reasonable assumption that intervention by mental health professionals can and does prevent some suicides. Further, the same intervention that helps individuals cope with the loss of their jobs or other life crises reasonably can be assumed to prevent, in some cases, the kind of murder-suicide tragedies that Muir inflicted on himself and his victims. I know from personal experience – having lost close family members to murder-suicide involving gun violence – that mental health intervention will not work in every case. Finding out what kind of intervention does work to prevent suicide should be a major subject of research. But it isn’t. Why? In part because Congress since 1996 has blocked funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that specifically would have paid for research into the effects of gun violence on Americans’ health – including the role that guns play in suicide. The Washington Post has reported that the CDC has balked at getting involved in such research even after President Barack Obama issued an executive order authorizing some gun-violence research after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. The CDC – and other sources of research funding – simply are afraid of retaliation from Congress and gun rights groups if they pay for any studies that could be interpreted as favoring gun control. That fear is preventing robust research that could pinpoint the best way for clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals to, in layman’s terms, talk people out of committing suicide. The most obvious irony is that preventing research into suicide prevention results in lethal harm to gun owners themselves. When about 20,000 people kill themselves with guns every year, roughly 20,000 gun owners are proving that guns often are more dangerous to their owners than they are to any outside threats. Gun rights advocates, as well as gun control advocates, should be able to agree that improving access to mental health services is a goal that would prevent gun deaths. Further, they should be able to agree that research to improve the mental health services actually delivered would prevent gun deaths. Not agreeing is, well, suicide. • • • Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida. For more state and national commentary visit Context Florida.
