Alex Jones arrives in court as he faces a second defamation trial over Sandy Hook’s claims in Waterbury, Connecticut, September 22, 2022.
Michelle McLoughlin | Reuters
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has asked a Connecticut judge to issue a judgment of nearly $1 billion against him and order a new trial in a lawsuit filed by the family of Sandy Hook, who say they have suffered harassment and intimidation from Jones’s lies about the 2012 Newtown School shooting.
Jones filed the claims Friday, saying that Judge Barbara Bellis’s pre-trial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial lapse of justice.”
“In addition, the amount of the damages award exceeds any reasonable relationship to the evidence presented at trial,” Jones’ attorneys, Norm Pattis and Kevin Smith, wrote in the petition. .
Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the 15 plaintiffs in the Jones case, declined to comment on Saturday’s filing, but said he and other attorneys for the Sandy Hook family will file objections to Jones’ request.
Twenty first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School died in the attack on December 14, 2012.
An FBI agent responding to a shooting and relatives of the eight children and adults killed in the massacre sued Jones for defamation and emotional distress for his release of the story. it’s not true that the shooting was a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to impose more guns. control.
Six juries in Waterbury, Connecticut, ordered Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, on Oct. to pay 965 million dollars damages to the plaintiffs and said damages should also be awarded. Bellis has scheduled a hearing early next month to determine the amount of damages.
During the trial, the victim’s relatives said in often emotional testimony that they had been threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show. Strangers were at the families’ homes to record and confront them in public. People throw abusive comments on social media. Relatives said they had received death and rape threats.
The rulings come after another jury in Texas in August ordered Jones and his company pay nearly 50 million dollars to the detriment of the parents of another Sandy Hook child killed. A third trial over hoax claims, involving two Sandy Hook parents, is scheduled to be held later this year in Texas.
Jones, who has admitted in recent years that the shooting happened, has ignited lawsuits and trials on his Austin, Texas-based Infowars program, calling them unjust and violating violate his right to free speech.
But he lost the right to present those defenses when judges in Connecticut and Texas found he was liable for damages by default without trial, for what they called the Jones affair. repeatedly failed to deliver several pieces of evidence including financial documents and web analysis to attorney Sandy Hook .
With liability established, the trials in both states focused solely on the amount Jones had to pay damages.
Pattis, Jones’ attorney, wrote in Friday’s filing that there was a lack of evidence of a direct link between Jones and those who harassed and threatened Sandy Hook’s family. Pattis said the trial was like a “memorial, not a trial.”
“Yes, the families in this case have suffered horribly as a result of the killing of their children,” Pattis wrote, adding that Jones did not send people to harass and threaten the families. family.
“No authoritative evidence has been presented at this trial that he has ever done,” he wrote. “Instead, there was a staggering abuse of a disciplinary violation and its transformation into a series of half-truths that misled the jury and resulted in substantial injustice.”
