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The
deliberations come after three weeks of trial in Waterbury,
Connecticut, not far from where a gunman killed 20 small
children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School
in December 2012. Jurors were sent home after an hour of
deliberations Thursday and will resume them on Friday.
Jones claimed for years that the massacre was staged by the
government as part of a plot to take away Americans' guns.
In closing arguments earlier Thursday, lawyers for the families
of eight Sandy Hook victims said Jones and his company, Free
Speech Systems LLC, cashed in for years on lies about the
shooting, which drove traffic to his Infowars website and sales
of products there.
The families, meanwhile, suffered a decade-long campaign of
harassment and death threats by Jones’ followers, attorney Chris
Mattei said.
“Every single one of these families were drowning in grief, and
Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them,” plaintiffs'
attorney Chris Mattei told jurors.
Jones’ lawyer, Norman Pattis, countered during his closing
argument that the plaintiffs had shown scant evidence of
quantifiable losses. Pattis urged jurors to ignore the political
undercurrents in the case.
“This is not a case about politics, I remind you that,” he said.
“It’s about how much to compensate the plaintiffs.”
The trial was marked by weeks of anguished testimony from the
families, who filled the gallery each day and took turns
recounting how Jones’ lies about Sandy Hook compounded their
grief. An FBI agent who responded to the shooting is also a
plaintiff in the case.
Jones, who has since acknowledged the shooting occurred, also
testified and briefly threw the trial into chaos as he railed
against his “liberal” critics and refused to apologize to the
families.
In August, another jury found Jones and his company must pay
$49.3 million to Sandy Hook parents in a similar case in Austin,
Texas, where Infowars is based.
Jones' lawyers hope to void most of the payout before it is
approved by a judge, calling it excessive under Texas law.
(Reporting by Jack Queen; editing by David Bario and Jonathan
Oatis)
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