An Austin, Texas, jury gave right-wing broadcaster Alex Jones his come-uppance this month when it delivered successive verdicts of $4.1 million in compensatory and $45.2 million in punitive damages against him in a defamation case arising out of the 2012 mass shooting of 26 first-graders and educators at Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The case demonstrated that Americans’ right of free speech, though extremely broad, does have limits. Falsehoods which have no basis in fact can’t be used to trash the reputation of others.

There’s nothing new about hate speech, propaganda or demagoguery, but Jones is a particularly odious perpetrator of these dark arts and one who seems incapable of real remorse.

His nationally syndicated radio show, Infowars, provides a prolific platform for alt-right conspiracy theories. It’s not clear whether he truly believes the outlandish tales he spews or is cynically monetizing the public appetite for messages that cater to paranoia, fear and anger. The evidence at trial, however, suggests greed as the more likely motive.

Sandy Hook was the deadliest mass shooting at an elementary school in the country’s history. It was widely investigated, documented and publicized. Yet Jones repeatedly claimed on Infowars, without any evidence whatsoever, that the shooting had been a “false flag” operation staged by the government to promote gun control and that those involved were “crisis actors.”

The parents of a 6-year-old boy killed at Sandy Hook filed suit against Jones, alleging his public pronouncements falsely portrayed them as part of a hoax. While grieving the loss of their son, they had been subjected to the hell of incessant harassment and threats from Jones’ acolytes. They sought damages for harm to their reputation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

As a sanction for his failure to produce documents during the discovery phase of the case, Jones was defaulted before trial on the issue of liability. The jury was only tasked with determining how much he should pay in damages.

In an attempt to minimize the jury award, Jones offered a retraction of sorts on the witness stand. He conceded that the massacre was “100% real,” though he also tried to downplay his culpability, claiming that he’d just made an honest mistake and had tried to correct himself and apologize to the victims only to have his words twisted by the “corporate media.”

After the verdict, however, Jones was back on the airwaves railing about conspiracies, claiming the trial had been “coordinated and run” by billionaire philanthropist George Soros and unnamed “operatives.” Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish immigrant who contributes generously to liberal causes, is a favorite target of the alt-right.

Throughout this case, Jones has attempted to portray himself as a beleaguered champion of the First Amendment. He appeared outside the courthouse on the first day of trial with his mouth ostentatiously covered by a piece of tape marked “Save the 1st” as a symbol of his free speech rights being muzzled. He has contended that the First Amendment permits him to communicate misinformation as long as he believes the misinformation to be true.

Jones is only partly correct. The Supreme Court has held that “erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and that it must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need.”

However, the Court, in the case of New York Times v. Sullivan, also held that a published falsehood crosses the line of acceptability and becomes libelous when it both injures the reputation of a public official or public figure and is made with “actual malice” — that is, “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” (The trigger for false statements about non-public figures is a lower one of negligence rather than malice).

The requirement to refrain from knowingly publishing falsehoods and to perform at least a minimal investigation to confirm the truthfulness of facts before publishing or broadcasting statements based on them is a pretty low bar to clear in return for the right to avail oneself of First Amendment protection from defamation suits.

For people like Jones, however, the very purpose of shouting into a megaphone is to spread lies, the nastier the better, because nasty lies sell well.

According to trial testimony from the plaintiffs’ forensic expert, the net worth of Jones’ business interests is between $135 million and $270 million, much of it hidden in shell companies. Earlier case filings showed that he drew $18 million in dividends and income from his various businesses between 2018 and 2021. A text message from Jones himself, disclosed during trial, revealed that Infowars earned as much as $800,000 in a single day in 2018 from flogging merchandise like brain pills, diet supplements and survivalist gear.

Even though Facebook, YouTube and Twitter had booted Jones’ show from their platforms in 2018, he was actually able to increase his income after that, according to the plaintiffs’ forensic expert. Jones is nothing if not resourceful in getting his voice out to, and raking in money from, his faithful followers.

Ultimately the only deterrent to the purveyors of hateful lies like Alex Jones is probably the justice, expressed in dollar terms, which can be delivered by a jury.

As plaintiffs’ counsel aptly summed it up at trial, “Speech is free, but you have to pay for lies.”

Elliott Epstein is a trial lawyer with Andrucki & King in Lewiston. His Rearview Mirror column, which has appeared in the Sun Journal for 16 years, analyzes current events in an historical context. He is also the author of “Lucifer’s Child,” a book about the notorious 1984 child murder of Angela Palmer. He may be contacted at epsteinel@yahoo.com