this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
42 points (92.0% liked)
Asklemmy
55051 readers
425 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So Jones actually defaulted on the trial. This means he was found guilty be default due to not complying with the court: 'repeated failure to abide by court rulings and to turn over certain evidence to the Sandy Hook families'. He basically refused to participate until the judge ran out of options.
He did this on purpose - possibly because he knew he would lose, he wanted to avoid giving them some horrific evidence, because he could spin that as a 'set-up' to his audience, because he was advised to take it and turn it on appeal, etc
Everything that happened in the 'trial', including the text messages etc, were in the damages portion. He had already been found essentially guilty of the allegations, and the jury's only task was determining how much he had to pay
Bear in mind it was a civil and not a criminal trial - these defaults can't happen in a criminal trial, where the defendent has no say in how things move ahead