The New York Times just suffered a courtroom loss unlike anything the newspaper has seen in more than half a century.
An eight-person federal jury in Alabama found the Times liable for defaming former Crimson Tide basketball player Kai Spears and awarded him $9.25 million in damages.
The case grew out of a 2023 Times report that falsely placed Spears at the scene of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa.
He was not there.
The verdict landed Thursday after a nine-day trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
Times media reporter Katie Robertson broke the result publicly:
News: An Alabama jury says The New York Times defamed former college basketball player Kai Spears in a 2023 article, awards $9.25 million in damages — full story to come https://t.co/0PEzNGuuM8
— Katie Robertson (@katie_robertson) August 20, 2026
The Associated Press reported that the dispute centered on an article published in March 2023 by Times sports reporter Billy Witz. The original account cited a person familiar with the investigation who spoke anonymously, and the paper later acknowledged its error in an editor’s note.
AP also confirmed that the eight-person jury reached its decision after a nine-day federal trial and that the Times is now reviewing its legal options.
The story identified Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman walk-on at Alabama, as the passenger in a car that was at the scene of the January 2023 shooting that killed 23-year-old mother Jamea Harris.
That passenger was actually Cooper Lee, a student manager for the basketball team.
The distinction could hardly have been more serious. Spears had been publicly connected to a murder scene based on information that turned out to be wrong.
The reporting relied heavily on confidential sources. One source identified Spears as the passenger, while a second said only that someone associated with Alabama had been in the car.
Spears’s father denied the allegation before publication.
The Times published anyway.
The next day, according to the court record, the second source told Witz he was likely wrong that Spears had been in the car. The newspaper continued to stand by the report at that point.
Spears filed suit in May 2023. The Times added an editor’s note and corrected the article days later after further reporting established that Lee — not Spears — was the passenger.
By then, the false identification had circulated nationally during one of the most closely watched stories in college basketball. Spears argued that the error caused emotional distress and permanently tied his name to a murder despite the fact that he had no connection to the crime scene.
The jury had to decide whether a later correction erased that harm or whether the original reporting failure still carried a legal price. After hearing the evidence over nine days, jurors chose the latter.
The Alabama Supreme Court’s published opinion lays out that sequence in detail. It also records Spears’s allegation that the Times failed to use reasonable care and published false, damaging claims despite serious questions about the information it had received.
The state high court became involved because the federal judge asked it to interpret Alabama’s reporter shield law during a discovery fight over confidential-source information.
In April, the court ruled that the statute protects information whose disclosure would inevitably identify a source. It does not automatically shield every piece of information that might merely help someone figure out who the source was.
That ruling did not decide the defamation claim. It shaped what information could be sought as Spears’s case moved toward trial.
The trial has now produced a verdict with enormous consequences.
The broader warning was immediate:
Kai Spears' $9.25 million victory against the New York Times in his defamation lawsuit is a test of whether getting the "gist" of a story right is good enough.
A jury says no.
And the media, including sports media but news too, are now on notice.
— Michael McCann (@McCannSportsLaw) August 21, 2026
The legal standard mattered.
The Washington Post reported that Spears was treated as a private figure even though he played college basketball. That meant he had to prove negligence rather than the more demanding “actual malice” standard applied to public officials and public figures.
That higher standard dates back to the landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan — another case with roots in Alabama.
This time, the newspaper bearing that name was on the losing side.
The Times called the false identification an honest mistake and said it believes both the liability finding and damages award are unsupported by the law and evidence. The company is reviewing its legal options, making an appeal a real possibility.
Spears’s attorney, Matt Glover, said he believes the verdict will improve journalism across the country.
ESPN summarized the jury’s decision and the central error behind it:
An Alabama jury on Thursday awarded $9.25 million in damages after finding that The New York Times defamed college basketball player, Kai Spears, by incorrectly reporting that he was at the scene of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa. https://t.co/pDmxHENV2N
— ESPN (@espn) August 21, 2026
Alabama Athletics lists Spears as a former Crimson Tide guard who earned SEC Academic Honor Roll recognition and appeared in 11 games during the 2023-24 season.
But the heart of this case was never a box score.
It was the damage that can follow when a young man’s name is falsely attached to a deadly crime — and what responsibility a powerful news organization bears after its sourcing fails.
The jury’s answer came with a $9.25 million price tag.
According to the Times’s own reporting, the paper had not lost a U.S. defamation lawsuit over one of its articles in more than 50 years.
That streak is over.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
