CT judge in showdown with Texas over Alex Jones Sandy Hook trials

NEWTOWN — It doesn't matter to a Connecticut judge that Alex Jones says he can't attend trial in Waterbury in September to award defamation damages to Sandy Hook families because Jones has two other Sandy Hook defamation awards trials scheduled in Texas to defend.

Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis isn't budging on her trial date.

“[T]he current dates for jury selection and evidence has been firmly set since August 5, 2021, and the court has made it clear that the trial will go forward as scheduled,” Bellis ordered on Wednesday in a case that continues to generate national attention. “Since the Texas courts have recently assigned new trial dates which conflict with this long-standing date, nothing prevents the (Jones lawyers) from filing motions for continuance in the Texas cases.”

Translation: any trial date that's rescheduled is going to be in Texas, not Connecticut.

Bellis' order was in response by a request from Jones' high-profile New Haven attorney Norm Pattis, who argued in a motion on Wednesday that it was “simply, physically impossible” for Jones and his defense team to begin jury selection in August and a trial in September when parallel trials were planned back-to-back in Texas on July 25 and Sept. 14.

The conflicting trial dates are not Pattis' only problem. Pattis has asked to stop representing Jones , who Pattis said he hasn't spoken to in weeks. So far, Bellis has refused to let Pattis withdraw from the case, saying Pattis and other Jones attorneys have either replaced themselves or asked to be dropped 13 times in four years.

Meanwhile, Jones' attorney in Texas said he had not seen Bellis' ruling and had not decided how to respond.

“All I can say is this highlights the payoff involved with having two state judges acting independently of one another with no referee,” said Andino Reynal. “This is why we filed for bankruptcy.”

Mark Bankston, an attorney for the parents of two slain Sandy Hook boys who won defamation lawsuits against Jones last year and are awaiting trials where juries will decide damages, said he had seen Bellis' ruling but declined to comment.

The short version of how Jones got into the predicament of having to be in two trials at the same time is that he sought federal bankruptcy protection for three of his business entities on April 18 — one week before his first trial in Texas was to begin to decide how much in damages he would pay the parents of a slain Sandy Hook boy.

That five-week drama of bankruptcy motions put the Jones trials in Texas and Connecticut on hold and pushed them on top of each other once Jones was bounced from bankruptcy protection.

Jones was bounced from bankruptcy protection when the Sandy Hook families dropped the three business entities he put into bankruptcy from their lawsuits. It was an easy decision for the families. The three Jones entities had a combined monthly income of $38,000. Jones, who did not file bankruptcy himself for fear it would ruin his trademark in the conspiracy theory market, made at least $76 million in 2019 on his merchandising broadcast platform, Infowars, his representatives said in court.

An FBI agent and eight Sandy Hook families who lost loved ones in the 2012 mass shooting and won a third defamation case against Jones last year have asked Bellis to sanction Jones for a “bad faith” bankruptcy filing and make him pay their legal costs for fighting it. The Sandy Hook parents in Texas have filed their own motion for the same relief.

What Bellis' showdown with her counterpart in Texas means remains to be seen. Bellis this week issued a detailed trial preparation order, laying out the protocol and timetable for attorneys, with penalties including “the entry of a default or a dismissal, or a finding of contempt” for failing to follow her instructions.