Sandy Hook jurors wrap up second day of deliberations in Alex Jones libel trial

Oct 11 (Reuters) – A Connecticut jury ended its second full day of deliberations on Tuesday without reaching a decision on how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay the families of the victims for falsely claiming that the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 was a hoax.

Proceedings will resume Wednesday morning in Waterbury, Conn., not far from where a gunman killed 20 young children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

Jones has claimed for years that the massacre was organized by the government as part of a plot to take Americans’ guns away.

The jury on Tuesday asked the court to clarify instructions for determining damages and then asked to consider the testimony of William Sherlach, whose wife, Mary, a school psychologist, was killed at Sandy Hook.

In August, another jury found that Jones and company should pay Sandy Hook’s parents $49.3 million in a similar case in Austin, Texas, where his Infowars website is based. The Connecticut lawsuit involves different plaintiffs than the Texas lawsuit.

Lawyers for the families of the eight Sandy Hook victims in the Connecticut case said Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, profited for years from lies about the shooting, which drove traffic to Infowars and product sales there.

The trial was marked by weeks of anguished testimony from the families, who filled the gallery each day and took turns recounting how Jones’ lies about Sandy Hook had deepened their grief. An FBI agent who responded to the shooting is also a plaintiff in the case.

Jones, who has since acknowledged the shooting took place, also testified and briefly threw the trial into chaos as he railed against his ‘liberal’ critics and refused to apologize to the families.

Reporting from Jack Queen in New York Editing by Noeleen Walder, Mark Porter and Matthew Lewis

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