Alex Jones seeks new trial after $1B Sandy Hook verdict

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has requested a Connecticut decide to challenge a virtually $1 billion judgment towards him and order a brand new trial in a lawsuit filed by the Sandy Hook household, individuals say. that they’d been harassed and threatened by Jones’ mendacity concerning the Newtown faculty taking pictures in 2012.

Jones filed the claims Friday, saying Choose Barbara Bellis’ pre-trial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a considerable lapse of justice.”

“As well as, the quantity of the damages award exceeds any cheap relationship to the proof introduced at trial,” Jones’ attorneys, Norm Pattis and Kevin Smith, wrote within the petition. .

Christopher Mattei, an lawyer for the 15 plaintiffs within the Jones case, declined to touch upon Saturday’s submitting, however mentioned he and different attorneys for the Sandy Hook household will file objections to Jones’ request.

Twenty first graders and 6 educators at Sandy Hook Elementary College died within the December 14, 2012 assault.

An FBI agent who responded to the taking pictures and relations of 8 kids and adults killed within the bloodbath sued Jones for defamation and psychological misery as a result of he gave the story It is not true that the taking pictures was a hoax staged by “disaster actors” to impose extra controllable weapons.

Six juries in Waterbury, Connecticut, ordered Jones and his firm, Free Speech Programs, on October 12 to pay $965 million to the plaintiffs and allege punitive damages. also needs to be given. Bellis has scheduled a listening to early subsequent month to find out the quantity of damages.

Through the trial, victims’ relations mentioned in typically emotional testimony that they’d been threatened and harassed for years by individuals who believed the lies instructed on Jones’ present. Strangers had been current on the households’ properties to document and confront them in public. Individuals throw abusive feedback on social media. Kinfolk mentioned they’d acquired loss of life and rape threats.

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The rulings come after one other jury in Texas in August ordered Jones and his firm to pay practically $50 million in punitive damages to the dad and mom of one other Sandy Hook baby who was injured. kill. A 3rd trial on hoax allegations, involving two Sandy Hook dad and mom, is scheduled to be held later this yr in Texas.

Jones, who has admitted lately that the taking pictures occurred, has ignited lawsuits and trials on his Austin, Texas-based Infowars program, calling them unjust and violating violate his proper to free speech.

However he misplaced the correct to current these defenses when judges in Connecticut and Texas discovered he was answerable for damages by default with out trial, for what they referred to as the Jones affair. repeatedly didn’t ship a number of items of proof together with monetary paperwork and net evaluation to lawyer Sandy Hook .

With legal responsibility established, the trials in each states centered solely on the quantity Jones needed to pay damages.

Pattis, Jones’ lawyer, wrote in Friday’s submitting that there was a scarcity of proof of a direct hyperlink between Jones and people who harassed and threatened Sandy Hook’s household. Pattis mentioned the trial was like a “memorial, not a trial.”

“Sure, the households on this case have suffered horribly on account of killing their kids,” Pattis wrote, including that Jones didn’t ship individuals to harass and threaten the households. household.

“No authoritative proof has been introduced at this trial that he has ever executed,” he wrote. “As an alternative, there was a staggering abuse of a disciplinary violation and its transformation right into a sequence of half-truths that misled the jury and resulted in substantial injustice.”