Outside on the courthouse sidewalk, Jones called the trial a “kangaroo court” and Judge Barbara Bellis a “tyrant.”īecause of a rare default ruling by Bellis a year ago, the defamation trial was actually a hearing on damages. Jones declined to testify in his defense and Pattis chose not to put on any defense at all. You are sort of like a pinball machine: Put enough money in and pull the lever and maybe all that money will pop out.” … The angrier you get the more money they will get. Kill Alex and we’ll all live happily ever after. Alex invented what is wrong with this world. “Alex invented fear,” Pattis said in his closing argument. Pattis accused lawyers for the families of appealing to jurors’ emotions by doing what they accuse Jones of - fomenting anger. Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, conceded that his client’s conspiracy theories - the school shooting was a hoax and the grieving parents were actors - are false and despicable, but they are what Jones or guests on his broadcast believed when they made them. … But you know something, that’s not enough.” He built a lie machine to push this stuff out. “You may say that is astronomical,” Mattei said. Then multiply that sum by 550 million, a figure that an expert trial witness for the families said reflects Jones’ massive audience reach across his broadcast, internet and social media platforms. Mattei did not suggest a damage award, but presented the jury with a formula for reaching one: Determine fair compensation for a person harmed by a single lie, told once. “This is their one chance, and your one chance … to render a verdict on just how much devastation Alex Jones has caused.” “He’s going on 10 years of defaming these families, and it’s not stopping,” Mattei told the jury in his closing. In both his opening and closing statements, Mattei told jurors they had the power to return a verdict that stops Jones. Jones fired back, “Is this a struggle session? Are we in China? I’ve already said I’m sorry, and I’m done saying I’m sorry.” The testimony ended in a shouting match when Christopher Mattei, a lawyer pressing the families’ suit, gestured toward the relatives sitting in a group in the courtroom gallery and accused Jones of putting “a target” on their backs. In court, called as a witness by the families, he said he had been mistaken about Sandy Hook, had apologized and was tired of doing so. Jones was as antagonistic when testifying inside the courthouse and outside at impromptu press conferences as he was while deriding the verdicts on his broadcast Wednesday. Another parent said a Sandy Hook denier threated to dig up his son’s grave to prove he had not been killed. The daughter of the murdered Sandy Hook Elementary School principal said she received rape threats in the mail. All said they were the targets of what one parent called a full-on assault on social media. The relatives described being confronted by complete strangers, at their homes, at shopping malls and while walking along a city street 3,000 miles from Newtown. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston) (Bryan Woolston/AP) Erica Lafferty, daughter of Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung, speaks to the media after jurors returned a $965 million dollar judgement in the defamation trial against Alex Jones, in Waterbury, Conn, Wednesday, Oct.
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