Jury Awards College Athlete $9.25M Over NYT Defamation

An Alabama jury just sent a costly message to the New York Times. Jurors ordered the paper to pay $9.25 million to college basketball player Kai Spears, finding it defamed him by wrongly placing him at the scene of a deadly 2023 shooting near the University of Alabama that left a young mother dead, the Guardian and AP report. The Times, which later corrected the story and noted Spears wasn't in the car involved in the Tuscaloosa shooting, called the verdict an unjust penalty for an "honest mistake" and said it's weighing its legal options.

Spears, who sued the paper soon after the shooting, argued that the report caused lasting emotional harm and tied his name to a murder. He also says in his complaint that he has received death threats over the incident, per the Times. His father, Christian Spears, said the family had originally sought just a retraction, but "instead, the Times defended its inaccurate article and continued to distort facts rather than acknowledge the harm they caused, acting as if its power made it untouchable." The Times acknowledged in its own coverage that it hasn't lost a US defamation case over its reporting in more than half a century.