Spears Awarded $9.25M In NY Times Defamation Suit
Lawyers for the New York Times are exploring their options after losing a multi-million-dollar defamation suit in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court.
An 8-person jury agreed with former Alabama Basketball player Kai Spears that the Times' coverage of the 2023 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Jamea Harris unduly harmed him by incorrectly identifying him as being involved. The coverage identified Spears as being in one of the cars involved in the shooting.
The jury awarded Spears $9.25 million, with the bulk of the amount being $7.5 million for punitive damages. Typically, punitive damages are one of the most common reasons a losing defendant, like the Times, challenges a verdict.
In the lawsuit, Spears had claimed the inaccurate reporting had caused him emotional distress and forever linked him with a murder.
The Times acknowledged their error and issued an editor’s note correcting the article just days after publication. The correction did not come until after Spears and his father publicly denied the claim, which allegedly came from an unknown informant.
"We're disappointed the jury found The Times liable for an honest mistake," NYT spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said in a statement issued Thursday. "We thank the jury for its service, but believe the verdict and award of damages are contrary to law and not supported by the evidence."
The last time the powerful newspaper widely regarded as the United States’ “newspaper of record” lost a defamation suit was also an Alabama case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 1964.
The then 23-year-old Michael Lynn Davis of Charles County, Maryland, has been convicted of capital murder in the case as the person who fired the shots that killed Harris.
Former Tide player Darius Miles remains in Tuscaloosa County Jail awaiting trial. He is also charged with capital murder after allegedly providing his friend Davis with the gun belonging to another Alabama player, Brandon Miller.
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