Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families • Hacker News Board

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#661

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:24 AM UTC

cjohnson318 wrote: post #244

wyager wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decisions of the courts are, by a wide margin, much more influenced by one's relationship with the regime than by one's relationship with morality.

Ideally, courts are concerned with legality, not morality.

Civil jury cases are concerned with both. If you commit an illegal act, but with a seemingly moral reasoning behind it, you may only suffer a light punishment. Now, if you are found guilty and your actions and behavior is found detestable by the jury the penalty will be far more harsh within the statutes.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#662

Post by dukeofdoom » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:28 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #640

dukeofdoom wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The judge threatened to throw Alex in jail for saying he was innocent to the jury. You can't really get more dystopian than that. Imagine if that happened during your own trial, what would you do? Would you still want to testify. There were a few other things the judge barred him from saying during his testimony, yet the prosecution spent days talking about them. How is that even remotely fair. Ridiculous verdict fro…

The concept you're upset with here is "the rules of evidence". You'll find that in a variety of ways, your freedom of expression is intensely curtailed in a court of law, and you cannot in fact make any argument you'd like. In particular, when you've lost a trial by deliberately defaulting it, you cannot re-raise the issues the trial settled in the damages phase of the trial. You lost, and those issues are now off th…

Imagine being accused of murdering someone. You ask for a jury trial. The prosecution asks you to turn over the murder weapon. You plead that you don't have the murder weapon because you are innocent. The judge tells you you have 5 days to turn over all the knives you ever bought. You don't, because you don't know where some of them are. The judge doesn't believe you.

The Dystopian Part:

The Judge finds you guilty of murder by default, without hearing any evidence of your guilt, and denies you your jury trial, based on the justification that you did not turn over a couple of the knives.

Guilt and Punishment:

The judge proceeds to hold what amounts to a memorial service, as family member after family member is called up to the stand by the prosecution and they cry in front of the jury over their lost loved one. Your lawyer can't effectively question a crying family member as that makes them seem like a cruel psychopath.

Should you take the stand in your defence, the judge threatens you and your lawyer with contempt, and by implication jail, if you go up there and say you're innocent. There's a list of things you're not allowed to talk about because they would imply your innocence. And you were already found guilty! Therefore, saying you're innocent would be perjury.

You're only allowed to answer with "yes", "no" or "I don't know" when the prosecution calls you up to the stand. After they berate you for half a day, and your defence lawyer objects to the judge losing control, the judge ends the day by yelling at your lawyer that she won't stand for any nonsense from now on. That she hasn't found a lawyer in contempt in all her career, but she's ready to do it now. The next day is when you're supposed to testify in your defence.

You decline to take the stand.

Final Instructions:

The judge tells the jury it isn't allowed to question or speculate on what basis you where found guilty, just that there are only here to determine your punishment.

This is what I'm upset with. This was a political show trial, engineered for a specific verdict.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#663

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:32 AM UTC

pGuitar wrote: post #169

Pxtl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analysis of their financials showed that, on good days, Jones' show would bring in $800K/day. Obviously that doesn't mean they have a billion in assets, but it does speak to how large their operation is.

Apple and other large businesses get fined nowhere near what they have in assets.... no matter how bad their actions are. One billion is just crazy in this case...

Because Apple is not inflammatory in the court. You cannot go into a court and behave poorly, especially in the a case covering murdered children and expect a jury not to punish you to the full extent of their capabilities.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#664

Post by DoItToMe81 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:37 AM UTC

incahoots wrote: post #350

thaumasiotes wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what Alex Jones did was not just "the wrong words", it was blatant slander that permanently ruined the lives of these people. How did it do that?

from what I recall he doxxed a few of the families and invoked a call to arms to his listeners to harass, stalk, and threaten said families. It's not as if he drove by the homes of these people and yelled expletives.

Do you have a source? I've both never heard this, or seen the clips. And I know a lot of people who HATE Jones and his fanbase, so I can't believe it would slip by them.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#665

Post by AnnikaL » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:38 AM UTC

jaredklewis wrote: post #658

dukeofdoom wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he awarded billions? That's a very damaging allegation. Considering he's not in jail, he must have been innocent.

Jones wasn’t awarded anything because he dropped the suit a few months after filing it. Defamation cases are civil, so ending up in jail isn’t one of the possible outcomes. Finally, defamation cases in the US are almost never resolved by determining whether or not a statement was factually accurate, so in general it is a mistake to infer anything from the result of a case alone (you always need to know the details of…

I think OP meant that he'd end up in jail if child pornography possession could be proven.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#666

Post by dang » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:41 AM UTC

polotics wrote: post #371

thaumasiotes wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Defamation law has always existed and people can always sue you for libel and slander. But a $965 million dollar judgment for libel or slander would have to be justified by comparable damages. That isn't the case here.

Comparable damage? Can you imagine your young daughter one days goes to school, never comes back because she bled to death in a corridor there, and then for years you get attacked by strangers claiming you made it all up and are a fake? One thing I really don't understand about the US of A is, while it is abominously violent, still, a pork like Alex Jones hasn't been physically attacked by anyone. It's like there's a…

Crossing into nationalistic flamewar is one of the worst things you could add to this, and resorting to violent rhetoric of your own is not ok.

Please don't do these things on HN, regardless of how strong the provocation is. It just makes everything worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#667

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #625

anigbrowl wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its distressing because of the harassment it engenders and includes the fear of future harassment, as much as anything else. If you prefer a legal system where the jury is not allowed to weigh such factors and damage awards are determined in accordance with some statutory formula, that's your prerogative. Don't do any business in Connecticut, I guess.

This doesn't answer my question. "Harassment is distressing" might be your opinion, but I'm not asking for your opinion. I'm asking if you can point me at anything in the plaintiffs' claims or their lawyer's arguments or the court ruling that based any part of the damage award on harassment by people who had nothing to do with Jones but just heard what he said, instead of just on defamation by Jones and his associate…

How about you look up the case and read the complaint for yourself, then you can express your opinion on how it's deficient. I don't know how the jurors parsed the evidence and haven't followed the trial so closely that I want to restate the plaintiffs' arguments.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#668

Post by pixl97 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

budder wrote: post #606

wyager wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is such a thing as consequences for your actions. A system which produces effects extrinsically equivalent to direct proscriptions on free speech is not better than a system which explicitly proscribes some speech, and is arguably worse, because it tricks credulous people into thinking it's not as bad.

Exactly. The state doesn’t need to directly destroy you financially like they do in China. They just have a legal framework that allows lawyers to do it for them. And we think we have so much more freedom in the west.

The state did not. The fine was decided by a jury.

I have a very strong suspicion that if I started exercising my 'freedoms' in a harassing manner against you personally then suddenly your views would be very different.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#669

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

polotics wrote: post #371

thaumasiotes wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Defamation law has always existed and people can always sue you for libel and slander. But a $965 million dollar judgment for libel or slander would have to be justified by comparable damages. That isn't the case here.

Comparable damage? Can you imagine your young daughter one days goes to school, never comes back because she bled to death in a corridor there, and then for years you get attacked by strangers claiming you made it all up and are a fake? One thing I really don't understand about the US of A is, while it is abominously violent, still, a pork like Alex Jones hasn't been physically attacked by anyone. It's like there's a…

> Can you imagine your young daughter one days goes to school, never comes back because she bled to death in a corridor there, and then for years you get attacked by strangers claiming you made it all up and are a fake?

Sure, we have a scenario in three parts:

1. Your daughter goes to school.

2. She bleeds to death in a corridor.

3. You get attacked by strangers claiming you are a phony.

Don't you think the damage occurs in step 2? What did Alex Jones have to do with that?

Can you imagine meeting an alien who reveals to you a better way of life, founding a religion according to his teachings, attracting followers, and then for years you get attacked by strangers claiming you made it all up? What would they owe you?

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#670

Post by MrJohz » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

dukeofdoom wrote: post #662

tptacek wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept you're upset with here is "the rules of evidence". You'll find that in a variety of ways, your freedom of expression is intensely curtailed in a court of law, and you cannot in fact make any argument you'd like. In particular, when you've lost a trial by deliberately defaulting it, you cannot re-raise the issues the trial settled in the damages phase of the trial. You lost, and those issues are now off th…

Imagine being accused of murdering someone. You ask for a jury trial. The prosecution asks you to turn over the murder weapon. You plead that you don't have the murder weapon because you are innocent. The judge tells you you have 5 days to turn over all the knives you ever bought. You don't, because you don't know where some of them are. The judge doesn't believe you. The Dystopian Part: The Judge finds you guilty of…

But that would be a criminal trial. This was a civil trial. I'm not even American and I understand the difference! The two processes work completely differently, and comparing them like this doesn't make sense.

As to the points you've made:

* Default judgment: If you repeatedly do not show up for a trial, then at a certain point the trial needs to still continue. You should not be able to indefinitely put off a case just by refusing to turn up. If this were a criminal case, Jones would be forced to be there, as it's a civil case this is the alternative (as I understand it).

* Not having evidence: would work a lot better as a defence if (a) you genuinely contested it, and (b) you didn't send all the evidence that you supposedly couldn't find to the opposition lawyer halfway through the case by accident

* The civil case was split into two parts: one to determine fault, and the other to determine damages. As previously mentioned, Jones refused to take part in the trial that would have determined whether he was guilty or not, and therefore a default judgement was given. If he wanted to claim he was innocent, he should have done it then. Again, this is, as I understand it, standard practice for a civil trial.

* During a discussion of how much damages you should pay, given you were found guilty, you cannot argue to the jury that you are innocent. This has already been decided - typically with your involvement, assuming you don't just refuse to turn up - so this is just not in question any more.