A federal jury in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, found The New York Times liable for defamation on Thursday and awarded former University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears $9.25 million, marking the first time in more than 50 years that the newspaper has lost a U.S. defamation lawsuit over one of its articles. The verdict included $7.5 million in punitive damages and $1.75 million in compensatory damages, after Spears' legal team had asked the jury for $15 million total.
The case traced back to a March 15, 2023 article by Times college sports reporter Billy Witz, which reported that a fourth Alabama player had been present at a deadly January 2023 shooting in a car that was hit by bullets. According to The Daily Record, Witz incorrectly reported that Spears was in a car with star player Brandon Miller during the incident, and Spears alleged the story amounted to libel and false light. Court filings presented at trial showed the article drew more than 200,000 online page views and was printed for hundreds of thousands of subscribers on the eve of Alabama's 2023 NCAA Tournament opening game, as detailed by Patch.
What Actually Happened on Grace Street
The January 15, 2023 shooting on Grace Street in Tuscaloosa killed 23-year-old Jamea Harris. Shooter Michael Lynn Davis was convicted of capital murder, and former Alabama player Darius Miles, accused of providing the handgun used in the killing, faces pending capital murder charges, according to Front Office Sports. Miller, who was a star player at the time, was never charged. The person actually riding in Miller's vehicle at the scene was University of Alabama basketball team manager Cooper Lee, who was never charged or implicated in any wrongdoing, per the same outlet's reporting.
Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman walk-on guard who did not play during the 2022-23 season, denied being present at the shooting at all. The Times published an editor's note atop its original article on June 2, 2023, only after Spears filed his lawsuit, indicating that a student manager — not Spears — was the person present at the scene. Spears sued the Times on May 30, 2023.
The Legal Threshold That Let the Case Reach a Jury
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision that also originated in Alabama, established that public-figure defamation plaintiffs must prove actual malice — meaning false information was published knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth. Private-figure plaintiffs, by contrast, need only prove the information was false and published with negligence. On May 28, 2026, U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon classified Spears as a private figure, a ruling that lowered his burden of proof and let the case advance to trial, as reported by Reason.
A separate pre-trial fight centered on Alabama's 1936 reporter shield law. In an April 2026 interlocutory ruling, the Supreme Court of Alabama held that the law protects only a reporter's source identity and information that would inevitably reveal it, rejecting the Times' attempt to withhold broader discovery materials, according to Courthouse News. Judge Axon had stayed the federal proceedings to ask the state high court to clarify reporter protections for online publications before that ruling came down.
What Witz's Sources Told Him Before Publication
During the nine-day trial in Tuscaloosa, Witz testified that he relied on an anonymous source with high-level access to case records, referred to in court as “Source A.” But trial documents showed a second source had texted Witz before publication warning that his identification of Spears was “likely wrong,” according to reporting cited by Voz.us. Spears' lawyers argued the reporting caused him severe emotional distress, mental anguish, and loss of enjoyment of life.
Judge Axon also pushed back on the Times' pre-trial strategy during evidentiary motions, cautioning defense counsel against treating the court as an “evidentiary Santa Claus” by trying to introduce the post-publication editor's note without letting jurors see the full internal communications surrounding the error, Patch reported.
Fallout for a Freshman Walk-On
Spears transferred to Marshall University and later to West Liberty University to continue his college basketball career after the article's publication, according to On3. He testified at trial that he faced public heckling and reputational damage linked to the false murder story.
Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said the verdict and damages award were contrary to law and unsupported by the evidence, and that the paper was disappointed the jury found it liable for what it characterized as an honest mistake. The Times is reviewing its legal options, and the paper sent a reporter to cover the trial in Tuscaloosa before reporting the verdict itself on Thursday.
The ruling adds to a run of recent legal and political friction surrounding the paper, following Trump's treasonous claim over its Iran war coverage and Florida Attorney General Uthmeier's demand for years of internal records. An open question now is how the Times will frame its formal appeal, particularly around the size of the punitive damages and whether its post-publication correction satisfies Alabama's statutory retraction requirements.
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