The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 14 rejected radio talk show host Alex Jones’s appeal of a $1.4 billion defamation judgment related to his description of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting as a hoax.
The court denied the petition in Jones v. Lafferty in an unsigned order without comment. No justices dissented.
The Infowars host, who called the large civil judgment “a financial death penalty,” had argued that a judge was wrong to find him financially responsible for defamation and infliction of emotional distress without first conducting a trial regarding the allegations made by relatives of the victims. The shooting led to the deaths of 20 first graders and six school employees in Newtown, Connecticut….