Alex Jones addresses supporters of Donald Trump on December 12, 2020 in Washington. OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP
Far-right American conspirator Alex Jones was sentenced by a Texas court on Friday, August 5 to pay the parents of a boy arrested in the 2012 Sandy-Hook crime family an additional $45.2 million – died in shootings.
That sum comes in addition to the $4.1 million in damages Alex Jones ordered Thursday by the court to also pay to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was killed in the massacre at that Connecticut school.
The founder of the Infowars website – who was not in the courtroom to hear the verdict on Friday – had denied the reality of this bloody attack, the worst ever in an American school. A young man armed with a semi-automatic rifle had killed twenty children and six adults there, and Alex Jones, a well-known far-right figure and supporter of conspiracy theories, had confirmed on his website against all evidence that the massacre was just a stage show put on by gun opponents was driven.
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The damages decided on Friday are called “punitive” – a special feature of American law that does not exist in France in particular. They aim to discourage the convict from committing another crime and anyone else from committing the same crime. In total, Alex Jones has to pay Jesse Lewis’ parents $49.3 million.
More fines are likely to follow
Wesley Ball, the latter’s attorney, introduced the jury on Friday before deciding: “You have the ability to send a message to the whole country, even to the world (…). And it’s supposed to stop Alex Jones. Stop the monetization of misinformation and lies”. Mr Ball had asked her to “make sure he couldn’t do it again”.
The fines the Texas court handed down to Alex Jones on Thursday and Friday are the first in the case, but they are part of a series of lawsuits being filed against this influential Trumpist activist by relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre to have. He had eventually publicly admitted the reality of the murder but refused to cooperate with the courts. Several families sued him for compensation. Judges in Texas and Connecticut had already defaulted on him paying damages to the plaintiffs, but left it to the jury to determine the amount. Further financial sanctions are likely to follow and could deprive Alex Jones of his platform; The financial health of his company is fueling much debate.
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The killings, recurring in the United States, are often the subject of conspiracy theories that challenge the reality of the facts and sometimes provoke harassment from relatives of victims accused of lying.