A Connecticut jury began hearing arguments Tuesday in the trial of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to decide how much money he should pay the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and an FBI agent who responded to the December 2012 attack.
It is the second trial for Jones, who was ordered by a Texas jury last month to pay nearly $50 million in compensatory damages to the parents of one of the slain children for the suffering caused by his lies about the massacre. Jones was not in the courtroom Tuesday.
The trial — stemming from a civil case Jones lost by default last year — is being held in Waterbury, Connecticut, about 20 miles from the attack in which a gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators.
Jones was found liable by Judge Barbara Bellis without a trial last year after he failed to turn over documents to attorneys for the families.
Before opening statements began, Bellis sanctioned Jones’ legal team for what she described as their “stunningly cavalier attitude” toward turning over evidence. Bellis said they “consistently engaged in dilatory and obstructive discovery practices.” Jones’ attorneys did not turn over data of his Infowars website’s traffic.
Bellis told jurors that Jones has already been found liable for damages to the plaintiffs for repeatedly saying the shooting was a hoax on multiple platforms and claiming that no one had died in the shooting. Bellis explained to the six-member jury that their task is to decide how much Jones must pay the plaintiffs for defaming them.
During opening statements, Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the families, told jurors of Jones’ business model, saying he profited off of spreading “fear and anxiety and paranoia in his audience.” Mattei showed slides of Infowars traffic data, including one that showed that in December 2012, the month of the Sandy Hook shooting, the site attracted more than 4.6 million users and upward of 24.9 million page views. For years, Mattei told jurors, Jones has promoted lies on his online and radio shows, saying that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged by crisis actors for the federal government as a pretext to take away people’s guns.
The families of the victims and William Aldenberg, an FBI agent who responded to the Sandy Hook shooting, have said they have been harassed by people who believe Jones’ lies. Some have said they have endured death threats.
Norm Pattis, an attorney for Jones, told jurors during his opening statement that his client was being scapegoated and treated as a “whipping boy.”
“The haters want him silenced,” Pattis said. “They hate him because he says outrageous things.”
Pattis accused the plaintiffs of “overstating the harm” that Jones caused them, politicizing the proceedings, and said that the damages claims are exaggerated.
Aldenberg was the first witness to take the stand. He wept as he walked the jurors through what he saw and heard Dec. 14, 2012.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
