WATERBURY, Conn. — The Waterbury jury in the Alex Jones trial will continue deliberating next week on how much the InfoWars hots will have to pay eight Sandy Hook families and an FBI agent in damages.
The jury concluded its first full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict on Friday. They are scheduled to return Tuesday.
After deliberating just briefly Thursday afternoon, the panel got back to business Friday with a request for a dry-erase easel, markers, an eraser and a copy of the jury instructions.
The judge granted the dry-erase markers request and the copy of the charges request. The judge said, however, it would take several hours to get them a copy of the charges.
---
Beginning Thursday, deliberations happened for less than an hour as the day was mostly packed with closing statements from the families' lawyers and Jones' lawyer, Norm Pattis.
A separate defamation trial in Texas over the summer ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million to the Lewis family, who lost their son Jesse in the shooting.
Thursday, the families' lawyer argued that Jones should pay one dollar for each of the 550 million people that Jones' show InfoWar is estimated to have reached. That number, times the 15 plaintiffs in the suit, would total over $8 billion.
"You may say that’s astronomical, it is. It is. It’s exactly what Alex Jones set himself up to. That’s what he built. He built a lie machine that could push this stuff out," said Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Pattis argued back, saying there was no evidence to prove the harassment the families faced, and reminded the jury that the damages owed would be compensation for the costs of the damages caused and not as a punishment for what Jones did.
“We sat through a veil of tears that could not help but have stirred your emotion, could not help but stirred your sympathy, could not help but to give you a bias,” Pattis said. “The judge will tell you: sympathy, bias and emotion don’t play a role in hearing in damages.”
During the course of the trial, the Sandy Hook families spent time talking about their lives, how they met their spouses, and what they did for work. Mattei said they wanted the jury to hear they were real people.
The families' lawyers showed clips from Jones’ on his Infowars show. In some, Jones said when talking about Sandy Hook that they were “staging it.”
Pattis showed a 19-minute clip of an InfoWars broadcast in which Jones shared his frustration about being sued for his Sandy Hook lies in 2018. In the video, Jones called out major news networks that ran with the lawsuit story. He also compared and contrasted mainstream media scandals with the news of the Sandy Hook lawsuit and what he had said on his shows.
“You notice, I’m not invited to any of these shows, it’s all gotta be one-sided so that Megyn Kelly can lie to everybody,” Jones said in the broadcast.
Pattis echoed a statement Jones had said numerous times on the courthouse steps.
“Alex Jones didn’t kill their children… Alex Jones reacted from afar because he thought it was another sign of a conspiracy,” Pattis said.
To help the jury determine the amount Jones owes the Sandy Hook families, Mattei explained that damages in defamation/slander per se and emotional distress are the focus.
“This is their one chance and your one chance to render a verdict just how much devastation Alex Jones caused,” Mattei told the jury.
Attorney Josh Koskoff, on the plaintiffs’ legal team, had time to present a rebuttal after Pattis' closing arguments.
“There is nothing childish, funny, or accidental, or cute or comical about Alex Jones and what he did to those families and that is an incredibly disrespectful thing to suggest,” Koskoff said.
Koskoff called Jones "cowardly" for holding several press conferences outside of court but seldom sticking around to listen to testimony inside the courtroom.
---
Jones was already found liable for calling the Sandy Hook shooting a hoax on his Infowars show.
A separate defamation trial over the summer ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million to the Lewis family, who lost their son Jesse in the shooting.
A third similar suit, out of Texas, is awaiting trial.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took away the lives of 20 students and six educators.
---
Have a story idea or something on your mind you want to share? We want to hear from you! Email us at newstips@fox61.com
HERE ARE MORE WAYS TO GET FOX61 NEWS
Download the FOX61 News APP
iTunes: Click here to download
Google Play: Click here to download
Stream Live on ROKU: Add the channel from the ROKU store or by searching FOX61.
Steam Live on FIRE TV: Search ‘FOX61’ and click ‘Get’ to download.