The court system worked very well in this case. A set of parents brought a civil lawsuit against a well-known man who was spreading what they thought were lies and inflicting emotional distress. Jones had plenty of time to respond, and he decided not to. Therefore, the case was decided in default, as is the way all civil cases would have been.
Then, a jury of his peers was brought in to decide on the size of the penalty. After hearing evidence, and giving Jones a chance to respond and question (which his lawyers absolutely failed to do effectively), the jury decided on a penalty.
This is a very simple case of a civil court system working as intended. Just because Jones lies to his audience and his audience is beholden to Jones's view of the world, does not mean the court system is malfunctioning.
Listen to Knowledge Fight, it's better than InfoWars.
Again, what do you mean by "peers"? In the justice system, it just means a cross-section of the community that is as impartial as possible, as filtered out by the voir dire process. I don't think in any way these are his friends or family or colleagues or buddy-buddy with him. They were just what is typically called a jury of one's peers, as in fellow citizen. I do believe they were his fellow citizens that ruled on the judgement, yes.
Discovery isn't just giving over random documents. It's about giving over the documents that are requested by the other side. So giving more documents than they ask for is actually a hinderence. And the case was not about specific documents, it was the overall actions. Because of the "consistent pattern of discovery abuse" (quoting the decision), the parents could not see that evidence.
As for the larger point, in public opinion, most people see Jones getting what he deserves. He lied over and over again, caused harm to many families, and is now getting punished for it. He did this while knowing he was lying.
I'm also interested in what way during trial Bankston made himself look bad or anti-first amendment or against justice.
> It's about giving over the documents that are requested by the other side.
Right, 100%. The point of contention is that documents that don't exist were demanded and those documents that don't exist are what the court claimed a default judgement over. This is per the court's own records.
> the parents could not see that evidence.
What evidence do we believe we are talking about here? If this evidence was never entered into the trial, why should us spectators believe it existed?
> the "consistent pattern of discovery abuse" (quoting the decision)
This here is what gives Alex ground to say "the court was on trial", in the greater context that an undercover journalist caught someone who works for the CIA on video admitting that the suits against Jones are lawfare. If you have not seen this video, you may not know how much information you are missing on this topic. If you dismiss the video because a particular group filmed the video, then we're not playing a game of mutually pursuing the truth here.
Throughout the entire process, Alex alleged a consistent pattern of discovery abuse on the part of the court. Deprivation of rights under color of law is a very serious crime that carries a 10+ year prison sentence. And yes, judges do sometimes have federal lawsuits filed against them for it.
> caused harm to many families
The other major point of contention, is this was never demonstrated in court, let alone meaningfully argued in court.
> He did this while knowing he was lying.
This also was never demonstrated. The court records don't show anything like this ; perhaps they show something like this on a procedural matter around discovery, but not anywhere on the topic of the supposed substance of the case.
> and is now getting punished for it
The other so-called echo chambers, the ones that don't have a shadowbanning and censorship problem, the one one the side that won the majority vote in the recent election, don't see it this way at all.
They brought a case. They asked for discovery. The Jones team explicitly did not respond to discovery. The court sanctioned for a while, giving Jones more time. Eventually the case was brought to default. Because this is a civil case, that is very reasonable given the extraordinary lengths Jones's team went to avoid actually complying with court orders.
Then the damages hearing was held, where evidence was presented to show that defamation happened. The jury agreed.
The only real issue with this is that people don't like to read, and they would rather listen to Alex Jones's version of the story. This was a defamation case, which everyone has a right to, and Jones repeatedly spat in the face of the process (including destroying evidence).
It is hard to see how this case was handled poorly, and bad vibes alone aren't enough to say it was mishandled. This was a long process that Jones could have handled, but he gambled with his legal strategy and lost.
He did present his view in the damages portion. And the court ruled that he did not comply with discovery. Then later in the damages portion of the trial, it was proven he lied. Like, on live camera.
The court records show that he claimed he could not find documents that were then turned over, inadvertently, to the plaintiffs' attorney in an unrelated filing. This seriously raises the question of whether he is actually that inept at finding documents when compelled by law or intentionally tried to hide them.
It turns out juries don't like feeling they were deceived. And he did himself no favors calling the whole situation a "Perry Mason moment."
I think you would be of interest to cognitive researchers. Here we have living proof that intelligence is not a necessary prerequisite for the use of language!
