Tag: sandy hook shooting
Alex Jones Earns $25K Daily Contempt Fine For Evading Sandy Hook Deposition

Alex Jones Earns $25K Daily Contempt Fine For Evading Sandy Hook Deposition

Ever since many of the families who lost loved ones in the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school in 2012 sued InfoWars misinformation giant Alex Jones, he’s been running scared. He has dragged his heels, he has attempted to walk back the many hours of lies he told, and he has stalled. His attempts to play vile legal games in court against the Sandy Hook families he called “crisis actors” who he said helped perpetrate a “false flag” hoax on Americans have not fooled the judges presiding over his cases. In fact, his attempts to draw out what is already an unconscionable process for the families still grieving led a Connecticut judge to rule that Jones was liable to the families of eight of the victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Along with other similar rulings, Jones faces liability to the families of 10 people killed that terrible day in total. Jones and his legal team have continued their defense strategy of running and hiding and dragging their feet. In the most recent defamation case against Jones, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis has had to watch as Jones produced a dubious doctor’s note saying he could not come to court to sit for a deposition and watch as Jones proceeded to tape a four-hour episode of his InfoWars show at home.

After missing a second deposition and multiple orders from Bellis to appear, Jones is now being slapped with a contempt of court charge from the bench.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Bellis told the court she is holding the conspiracy theory snake oil salesman in contempt of court as Jones has "intentionally failed to comply with orders of the court" and his excuses have not held up. "The court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant Alex Jones willfully and in bad faith violated without justification several clear court orders requiring his attendance at his depositions on March 23 and March 24,” Bellis said, but she did not go as far as issuing a bench warrant for Jones’ arrest, though the plaintiffs in the case asked the judge to issue that arrest warrant.

In arguing for Jones to spend time in jail, the attorney representing the Sandy Hook families in this case, Christopher Mattei, told the court: "It seems to us that Mr. Jones has made a deliberate decision that he would rather suffer the contempt of court rather than expose himself to deposition.” Mattei did not comment on the judge’s contempt decision.

Bellis put Jones’ contempt punishment at $25,000 a day, beginning on April 1. According to reports, Jones will be fined for every business day he misses in court until he sits for two days of depositions before April 15. If Jones does comply before April 15, his contempt charge “will be purged,” at which point he would be able to apply for a reimbursement of any fines he accumulates. Jones’ attorney asked Bellis to belay the fine until April 11, saying there was “a scheduling conflict.” There is no word yet on whether or not Bellis will alter her contempt ruling.

Jones and his legal team’s strategy is the kind of time-wasting that big business does in the hopes of winning a war of attrition against overwhelming odds of being found liable or guilty. On Tuesday, just one day before this contempt charge against Jones, the families rejected an attempt by Jones to settle the case for $125,000 per family. The families released a statement saying that this pittance of a settlement offer was a “transparent and desperate attempt by Alex Jones to escape a public reckoning under oath with his deceitful, profit-driven campaign against the plaintiffs and the memory of their loved ones lost at Sandy Hook.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

#EndorseThis: Chris Murphy Filibusters For Change

#EndorseThis: Chris Murphy Filibusters For Change

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) concluded his nearly 15-hour filibuster to call for votes on two gun control measures early this morning by telling the story of six-year-old Dylan Hockley, an ebullient student at Sandy Hook Elementary with an infectious laugh. Diagnosed with autism, Hockley died on December 14, 2012 in the arms of his special education teacher and personal aide, Anne Marie Murphy.

Standing next to a poster of Hockley, Murphy appeared to get choked up as he recalled Hockley’s life, his bonds with his brother, classmates, and Murphy, and his intelligence and enthusiasm for learning. He closed with a call to his colleagues to act on gun control:

“It doesn’t take courage to stand on the floor of the United States Senate for two hours or six hours or 14 hours. It doesn’t take courage to stand up to the gun lobby when 90 percent of your constituents want change to happen. It takes courage to look into the eye of a shooter and instead of running, wrapping your arms around a six-year-old boy and accepting death as a trade for just a tiny, little, itty piece of increased peace of mind for a little boy under your charge.”

Sen. Murphy, who was the representative for Connecticut’s 5th district (which included Newtown) before his senatorial term began in January 2013, ended his filibuster after learning that Republican leaders had agreed to hold votes on two measures that would ban gun sales to individuals on terror watch lists and broaden background checks, respectively. However, as Donovan Slack of USA Todaynotes, it is still unclear whether either law will actually pass, since the measures were defeated in the Senate after the San Bernardino shooting in December, and House Republicans would likely put up a fight against any progress in the Senate.

But Murphy’s remarks serve as a reminder that in the four years after the Newtown shooting, Congress has been inactive regarding gun control measures. And it also served again to show the devastating human costs of gun violence.

As Murphy’s filibuster ended, Dylan’s mother Nicole Hockley — a founder of the gun control group Sandy Hook Promise, tweeted, “We love you @ChrisMurphyCT from @sandyhook. You are a true champion!”

Photo: Chris Murphy filibusters. NBCNews.com

If Sandy Hook Is ‘Bearable,’ What Is Not?

If Sandy Hook Is ‘Bearable,’ What Is Not?

You frequently find fortune cookie aphorisms, yes, but it’s not often that you find searing insight within Twitter’s 140-character confines. Which is why a June tweet from one Dan Hodges — his profile describes him as a British political commentator — stood out.

“In retrospect,” wrote Hodges, “Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

You may cringe to hear the nation’s response to the December 2012 massacre of 20 young children — six adults also died — at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, described in that fashion, but you can’t deny the brutal truth of the observation.

After Sandy Hook, President Obama called for new legislative initiatives, saying, “Surely we can do better than this.” Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said, “We need action.” Rep. John Larson said, “Politics be damned.” Parents of one victim walked the halls of Congress carrying pictures of their dead son and beseeching lawmakers to look, even as polls showed nearly 60 percent of Americans wanted stronger gun laws.

And nothing happened. In deciding between its children and its guns, America had decided the loss of the former was, in Hodges’ chilling word, “bearable.”

The memory of it haunts a Sunday interview CNN did with Andy Parker, the father of Roanoke, Virginia, TV reporter Alison Parker, who was murdered live on camera last week by a hateful and deranged man named Vester Flanagan. In vowing to commit his life to achieving sensible gun control, Parker said a number of striking things.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “they messed with the wrong family.”

“I’m going to be working on this for a long time,” he said. “I know that this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

He acknowledged that we have seen many “tipping points” where guns are concerned: the shooting of a congresswoman and her constituents at a supermarket, a mass murder at a movie theater, the Christmas season butchery of schoolchildren in Newtown. “But,” he said, sounding like nothing so much as a father who very much loved his daughter, “I think people recognizing who the victim was and what she represented and how kind and sweet and innocent she was, I think this time it’s going to be different.”

It’s always going to be different. But it never is.

With all due deference to a father’s incalculable sorrow, the likeliest outcome here is that the murder of Alison Parker and her colleague Adam Ward and the wounding of local official Vicki Gardner will join the long line of tipping points that didn’t tip and turning points that didn’t turn. Which is why Parker’s words inspire no great hope, but only break your heart.

The sad thing is, there is no — repeat: no — inherent or insoluble conflict between the desire of some of us to have access to guns for sport and self-defense and the desire of others of us to keep dangerous people from possessing those weapons. Decent, moderate people, working from both sides of the question, could probably hammer out ideas to safeguard both imperatives in an afternoon.

Problem is, gun owners’ interests are represented not by decent, moderate people, but by the NRA, an extremist gang for whom even the most modest regulation is a brick in the road to tyranny. So long as the NRA has such an outsized voice in this debate, so long as politicians, unencumbered by conscience or vertebrae, tremble to its call, and so long as many of us are silent and supine in the face of that obscenity, Hodges is correct. And we are doomed to a future of frequent, predictable and preventable tragedies some of us will mistake for freedom.

It makes you wonder. If that kind of thing is really “bearable” then what, pray tell, is not?

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL, 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Peretz Partensky via Flickr

Newtown Marks Massacre Anniversary With Reflection

Newtown Marks Massacre Anniversary With Reflection

New York (AFP) – A deeply scarred U.S. town lowered flags to half mast and urged quiet reflection on the two-year anniversary Sunday of a school massacre that left 20 children and six adults dead.

Officials in traumatized Newtown, Connecticut said a public ceremony would not be held, but instead asked people to mark the fateful day with personal reflection and remembrance.

On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza shot his mother and then stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School, spraying it with bullets before turning the gun on himself.

The mass shooting horrified the United States and triggered intense debate about America’s controversial gun laws.

Photos of the 20 cherub-faced youngsters cut down before their lives had properly begun circulated on social media Sunday, where condolences and prayers poured in.

School officials said the two years since the “awful” events were characterized by “days of joyful hope, and occasional dips of despair.”

“There is no escape from the realization that we are where we are because of the horrible loss of lives that occurred at the school on that fateful day,” a statement from local officials said.

Several lawmakers in Washington renewed calls for gun-law reform, and shared condolences with the families of those killed.

“The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is almost unspeakable. Six- and seven-year-old children taken from their families and courageous educators who died protecting the children in their care,” said Senator majority leader Harry Reid.

“I stand with the families of Newtown and the vast majority of Americans who believe there should be background checks that help keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous criminals and the mentally ill.”

Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro remembered the “20 little angels and their six brave educators” that were gunned down, and slammed Congress inaction on gun-law reform.

“The lack of congressional action is shameful, and I will keep fighting until we make badly needed changes, but this anniversary is a time to focus on the families,” she said.

Newtown continues to focus on rebuilding.

A new Sandy Hook Elementary School will open in 2016, and a permanent memorial is being planned.

A photograph of Jessica Redfield Ghawi, killed in the Aurora shooting, sits near the podium during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on December 10, 2014 (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb) (Correction: Jessica Redfield Ghawi was originally misidentified in this caption.)