A jury in Alabama on Thursday ruled that The New York Times defamed former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears and awarded him approximately $9.25 million in damages.
Ryan Phillips of the Tuscaloosa Patch reported on the verdict.
Spears’ lawsuit centered on how the Times wrongly reported that Spears was at the scene of a fatal shooting and whether the Times arguably getting the “gist” of the facts right was good enough.
Authored by Billy Witz, the March 15, 2023, story, “A Shooting That Ensnared Alabama Players Could Have Been Deadlier,” suggested it had a scoop with new reporting that Spears was at a shooting incident on Jan. 15, 2023, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., that killed Jamea Harris, a 23-year-old mother from Birmingham. The incident involved former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles allegedly retrieving a gun from the car of star player Brandon Miller, who was not accused of wrongdoing, and giving it to another man, Michael Davis, who was the shooter.
Among other things, the story expressed that Spears’ presence at the scene “had not been previously reported” and that neither of the two bullets that struck Miller’s car hit either Miller or Spears.
