Son's courage inspired his Sandy Hook mom while confronting Alex Jones in court

Shortly after watching jurors slap InfoWars founder Alex Jones with almost $50 million in combined judgments, the mother of Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis said the turning point in the two-week trial, for her, had arrived Tuesday when she was finally able to look the conspiracy theorist in the eyes and confront his lies about the 2012 school shooting.

"I'd been so nervous, I think that was obvious, before I faced Alex," Scarlett Lewis said of her time on the witness stand.

But Jones' arrival in the downtown Austin courtroom, midway through her testimony, sparked a noticeable change in Lewis, whose testimony until then had been reserved.

"Once I looked into his eyes, I realized that's exactly what Jesse did to the shooter that came into his first grade classroom," Lewis told reporters gathered around her as the courtroom emptied Friday evening. "He stood up to the bully … and saved nine of his classmates' lives."

Jesse, age 6, shouted for classmates to run during a pause in the shooting. Nine survivors ran. Jesse did not.

"I hope that I did that incredible courage justice when I was able to confront Alex Jones, who is also a bully, and I hope that that inspires other people to do the same in their own lives," Lewis said. "We all have the capacity to show the courage that Jesse showed."

Mark Bankston, one of the lawyers for Lewis and Jesse's father, Neil Heslin, called Jones' arrival in court that day "the worst mistake he ever made in this case."

Speaking directly to Jones from the stand, Lewis talked about living in fear, about being unable to heal, for almost a decade as Jones' lies about the school shooting being a hoax resonated with his followers, leading to death threats and harassment of her family that continues to this day.

Grumet: Alex Jones tried to play the victim as Sandy Hook parents, and the truth, prevailed

"I got to look into his eyes, and I got to tell him the impact of what his actions had on me and my family, and not just us, but all the other Sandy Hook families, all the people who live in Sandy Hook, and then the ripple effect that had throughout the world," Lewis said. "That was a cathartic moment."

Home videos played for the jurors were particularly poignant.

"For me to literally watch that video that had clips of Jesse running, after all the time he said Jesse doesn't exist, to make him sit there and watch that, it was a beautiful moment," she said.

Impact of punitive damages cap?

Jurors hit Jones with two penalties.

On Thursday, they determined that he should pay $4.1 million to compensate Heslin for defamation and compensate both parents for severe mental anguish.

Jurors followed Friday with punitive damages — which are intended to punish for past actions and deter repetitions in the future — of $45.2 million, a stunning sum that immediately led to speculation about how much Jones would actually have to pay.

Texas law generally caps punitive damages at $750,000.

Andino Reynel, Jones' lawyer, said after the trial that he will ask state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to drastically reduce the punitive damages award, saying it should be no larger than $1.5 million for the two parents. He also can challenge the award on appeal.

Bankston believes the cap, if found to apply in the Jones case, could limit the award to around $4.5 million because it imposes $750,000 limits "per cause of action, per plaintiff, per defendant."

More: What exactly did Alex Jones say about the Sandy Hook shooting, anyway?

But Bankston plans to argue that the cap could not be constitutionally applied to the Jones case, saying, "We believe the damages will be subject to a reasonable ratio test under Texas law," allowing a reasonable multiple of the earlier $4.1 million award.

Another option, he said, is to challenge the constitutionality of the Texas cap, but that would be a lengthy and uphill process.

"In the next 24 hours, everyone's going to be talking about the cap and everyone's going to think that they know what's going on with the cap, including me — and none of us do. We don't know," Bankston said.

"In the end," he said, "I don't think we will have to litigate the cap issue. I think what's going to happen is those claims are going to be valued in bankruptcy court," leading to payments for Jesse's family and other Sandy Hook families awaiting two similar damages trials in Austin and Connecticut.

Jones' main company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy midway through the trial. Those proceedings are in the early stages.

'Divide up the corpse of InfoWars'

However the punitive damages situation plays out, Bankston said he believes the verdicts spell the beginning of the end for Jones and his InfoWars media system.

More: As trial ended, Alex Jones called his Sandy Hook portrayal 'absolutely irresponsible'

Jones faces similar damage award trials in Connecticut, where the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and an FBI agent filed suit, and another in Austin for the parents of 6-year-old victim Noah Pozner. Jones also faces damages for misidentifying Marcel Fontaine as the gunman in the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

"This is the battering ram through the door of the InfoWars fortress. That will cause the collapse of this whole house of cards," Bankston said. "I think one thing is clear: His time on the American stage is coming to an end. It's done.

"There is going to be a large set of plaintiffs who are going to be dividing up the corpse of InfoWars and the bankruptcy estate," he added. "Over the course of that process, that could get very, very dangerous for Mr. Jones. There is going to be new level of financial scrutiny in bankruptcy court."

Reynal, Jones' lawyer, disagreed.

"Alex Jones will be on the air today. He'll be on the air tomorrow. He'll be on the air next week. He's going to keep doing his job, holding the power structure accountable," Reynal said outside the courthouse Friday.

About that 'Perry Mason moment'

One of the most talked about moments of the trial came when Bankston revealed, with Jones on the stand, that defense lawyers had mistakenly sent him a huge file containing a record of Jones' text messages and other cellphone data.

The Wednesday revelation was intended to impeach Jones' testimony about providing phone records, but what Jones derided as Bankston's "Perry Mason moment" got far wider notice.

The U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol requested a copy of the file; Jones, a participant in events leading up to the riot, declined to answer committee questions in a January deposition.

Reynal filed an emergency motion Thursday asking Guerra Gamble to block the release of the phone records.

On Friday, after the jury verdict was announced, the judge denied that request, telling Bankston that he's free to distribute the records. "I am not standing between you and Congress. That is not my job," Guerra Gamble said.

Outside of court, Bankston said he will turn over the records, but he wanted to tamp down expectations on the cellphone data, saying it appeared to come from mid- to late 2020, before the Capitol riot.

"However, that has not diminished law enforcement interest in the text messages we have, so I do plan to turn that over," Bankston said, declining to name the agency that requested the records.

In a related development, the judge in the Sandy Hook case in Connecticut ordered Reynal to appear in her court on Aug. 17 for possible discipline after the records inadvertently sent from his office to Bankston included confidential psychiatric records for Sandy Hook parents. That appeared to violate state and federal law, as well as a court order protecting the records from disclosure, the judge said.

Bankston also plans to file a motion for sanctions against Reynal in the Heslin-Lewis case, arguing that the opposing lawyer frequently violated court orders against providing certain information to jurors. Guerra Gamble said she will set a hearing on the matter after the motion is filed.

'A miracle and a blessing'

Lewis and Heslin, in riveting testimony, told jurors that one of their prime motivations in suing Jones was to protect their memory of Jesse and his legacy as a hero on the day he died.

With that accomplished, Lewis said she was particularly grateful that the jury awards, whatever the final number turns out to be, will help expand the work of her nonprofit, the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, which provides at no charge classroom instruction in social-emotional learning geared toward compassion and nurturing.

On school safety issues, a lot of the focus is on preventing attacks and hardening schools, she said.

"But we know now that the most important part of school safety is really focused on school culture, having a connected, compassionate, loving school culture," Lewis said. "We're going to be able to have a bigger platform, and we're going to be able to get this out to many more people, and that's a miracle and a blessing."

Another important accomplishment came when Jones, on the witness stand, said he no longer believes the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax or that the victims' parents were liars, actors or conspirators in a government plan to use the tragedy to confiscate firearms.

Jones said he was misled by Sandy Hook deniers who seemed credible to him at the time but later proved to be unreliable, though other testimony made it clear that InfoWars gave a voice to easily debunked "experts" who peddled refuted claims with little or no effort to verify their credibility.

Standing before cameras and reporters outside the downtown Austin courthouse, Bankston said Friday evening that the truth prevailed over misinformation and lies.

"One of the greatest things about this trial was we put in the ground, buried it at last, this idea that was affecting our society that Sandy Hook was fake," he said. "Now there is pretty much nobody left but the wildest, craziest folks out there."

At that moment, a man in the back loudly cleared his throat to draw attention to his hand-lettered sign, reading, "Nothing died at Sandy Hook but the truth."

Bankston shrugged off the interruption.

"Obviously, he's got his problems, but nobody but the craziest people in America believe that anymore," he said.

"It's done."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Alex Jones trial: Son's courage inspired Sandy Hook mom Scarlett Lewis