Jurors returned a verdict against Alex Jones late Friday that call on him to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.
The verdict comes a day after he was ordered to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages on Thursday.
In his closing statement, a lawyer representing the parents of Jesse Lewis, a 6-year-old boy killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, had urged jurors not to go easy on the InfoWars host, who repeatedly claimed the attack was a hoax.
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“[Alex Jones] is worth almost $270 million that we know of. Please take an amount that punishes him, and an amount that ensures he never does this again,” he said.
“We ask that you send a very, very simple message, and that is, stop Alex Jones. Stop the monetization of misinformation and lies. Please,” pleaded the lawyer, Wesley Todd Ball.
The verdict capped off a trial that went disastrously for the conspiracy theorist, with his own lawyers accidentally sending a lawyer for the Sandy Hook victim’s family two years’ worth of Jones’ damning text messages.
He was subsequently grilled on the stand over his earlier testimony, in which Sandy Hook lawyers said it was clear he had perjured himself by claiming he had no messages related to the school shooting or his claims about it.
Jones also claimed on the stand earlier this week that any award “above $2 million” would “sink” him and InfoWars, despite a forensic economist testifying that InfoWars made $64 million last year, and that Jones and his company Free Speech Systems are worth $135 million to $270 million.
The Friday ruling by the jury—the same jury Jones disparaged as “extremely blue collar folks” who “don’t know what planet they’re on” —also came after Scarlett Lewis, the mother of the slain Sandy Hook 6-year-old, confronted Jones in the courtroom.
“Alex, I want you to hear this,” she said Tuesday, staring straight at him. “We’re more polarized than ever as a country. Some of that is because of you.”
The boy’s father, Neil Heslin, also testified about the torment the family went through as a result of Jones pushing the bogus claim that the school shooting in which 20 children and six staffers died was a “giant hoax” in which the grieving parents were “actors.”
Heslin testified that he’d been harassed and attacked by conspiracy theorists on the street, with a gun even fired into his house on one occasion.
At the same time Heslin was testifying, Jones was busy broadcasting his show and was absent from the courtroom, something Heslin called a “cowardly act.”
Attorneys for the parents had sought $150 million in damages, and it is not clear how much of the $45.2 million sum will ultimately be awarded, as Texas law has statutory limits on punitive damages.
