Jury Awards Kai Spears $9.35 Million in New York Times Defamation Case

A federal jury in Alabama has awarded former University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears more than $9 million after finding The New York Times liable over a 2023 article that falsely placed him at the scene of a fatal shooting involving people connected to the school's basketball program.

The March 2023 article identified Spears as the passenger in then teammate Brandon Miller's car when the vehicle was struck by gunfire during the shooting that killed 23-year-old Jamea Harris in Tuscaloosa. The passenger was Cooper Lee, a student manager for the Alabama basketball team. Spears had left Miller earlier that night and was heading back toward his dorm when the shooting occurred.

Court records show Spears had no knowledge that a gun belonging to then teammate Darius Miles was in Miller's car. He also did not know about communications between Miller and Miles and learned about the shooting afterward.

Spears argued that identifying him as the passenger created a damaging account of his connection to the killing. The article linked Miller's vehicle to the gun later used in the shooting and described Spears as being at the scene, placing him alongside people who were directly connected to the events that night.

The dispute turned in part on a central rule of defamation law known as material falsity. The law focuses on inaccuracies that meaningfully change what readers are likely to understand about a person. Courts also recognize a related principle called substantial truth, which protects reporting whose essential meaning remains accurate despite smaller factual errors.

U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon ruled before trial that Spears' identification could qualify as a material error because correcting it significantly changed the account. Spears was elsewhere when the shooting occurred and had no advance knowledge of the gun or the events that followed.

The Times argued that its article remained substantially true because Spears had been with Miller earlier that night and was connected to people involved in the events. Axon allowed jurors to decide the issue, finding they could determine that placing Spears in the vehicle and at the scene gave readers a materially different impression.

Spears' status also shaped the legal standard at trial. He was treated as a private figure under defamation law despite playing for a nationally prominent college basketball program. Alabama generally permits a private person to establish defamation by showing that a publisher failed to use reasonable care in checking damaging information before publication.

Public officials and public figures generally face the higher constitutional standard known as actual malice. That test requires proof that a publisher knew information was false or acted with reckless disregard for its truth. The distinction gives private citizens greater protection when false reporting affects their reputations.

Spears' attorneys focused on the Times' efforts to confirm the passenger's identity. Reporter Billy Witz relied on confidential sources, and Spears' father told him before publication that his son had not been in Miller's car. Court records also show that another confidential source later raised doubts about the identification.

The Times maintained that the report resulted from an honest mistake after efforts to verify the information. Its lawyers cited discussions between Witz and his editor before publication and challenged Spears' evidence concerning the harm he suffered.

Spears also pursued a false light claim, which protects people from highly misleading public portrayals. Defamation primarily concerns damage to reputation, while false light focuses on the impression created about someone's conduct or circumstances. Alabama law requires a portrayal that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, along with evidence that the publisher knew the information was false or recklessly disregarded its accuracy.

Axon previously found that jurors could apply that standard to the Times article because it placed Spears in Miller's vehicle at the shooting scene and connected that vehicle to the weapon used in Harris' death.

The case also illustrates why the context surrounding an inaccurate statement can matter as much as the individual words. A person's name appearing incorrectly in a routine detail may carry limited consequences. Placing someone at the scene of a killing and connecting that person to a vehicle carrying the weapon can carry a substantially different meaning for readers, which became a central question for the jury.

Spears' attorneys asked the jury for $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages during closing arguments. Jurors returned an award exceeding $9 million after finding in his favor following the trial before Axon in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

The case remains pending before Axon in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama following the jury's verdict and damages award.