Alex Jones ordered to pay additional $45.2m in punitive damages to family of Sandy Hook victim by Texas jury
Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $45.2m in punitive damages to the family of a Sandy Hook victim by a Texas jury, in addition to the $4.11m he already must pay them in compensation.
The right-wing conspiracy theorist was not in court as the jury in Travis County, Texas, returned its unanimous verdict against him on Friday afternoon.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was among the 20 students and six adults killed in the mass shooting, sued Jones and his media company for the claims he has made that the massacre was a “false flag” operation and that the victims did not actually exist.
The jury’s decision came the day after it found that Jones should pay $4.11m in compensatory damages to the family.
Mr Heslin and Ms Lewis had asked for $150m in compensatory damages, and the jury’s decision on punitive damages are designed to deter harmful behaviour.
Following the ruling, the family’s lawyer Mark Bankston, asked the judge to make a ruling on if he could release a copy of Jones’ phone data accidentally sent to him by his legal team.
Mr Bankston says that the January 6 committee and other law enforcement agencies have already asked him to hand over a copy of the data.
Layers for Jones said that they wanted the judge to rule that Mr Bankston could not, but she refused to get involved in the situation.
“I am not standing between you (Bankston) and Congress, that is not my job and I am not going to do that. I am not getting in the middle of that fight,” said Judge Maya Guerra Gamble.
And she told the court that the case had been a “challenging and exhausting few weeks for us all.”
