--- title: "A jury finds the New York Times defamed an Alabama basketball player" description: "An eight-person federal jury in Alabama awarded Kai Spears $9.25 million on Thursday over a 2023 article that wrongly placed him in a car at the scene of a fatal shooting. The paper says it made an honest mistake and is reviewing its options. It is reportedly the Times' first US defamation loss over its own reporting in more than fifty years." category: "Business" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/business author: "Thomas Berger" published: 2026-08-21T13:37:51.000Z updated: 2026-08-21T13:37:51.000Z canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/a-jury-finds-the-new-york-times-defamed-an-alabama-basketball-player tags: ["defamation", "press-freedom", "new-york-times", "media-law", "alabama"] --- # A jury finds the New York Times defamed an Alabama basketball player An eight-person federal jury in Alabama awarded Kai Spears $9.25 million on Thursday over a 2023 article that wrongly placed him in a car at the scene of a fatal shooting. The paper says it made an honest mistake and is reviewing its options. It is reportedly the Times' first US defamation loss over its own reporting in more than fifty years. An eight-person jury in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama found on Thursday that the New York Times defamed Kai Spears, a former University of Alabama basketball player, and [awarded him $9.25 million](https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49675770/jury-rules-new-york-s-defamed-alabama-basketball-player). Reporting on the verdict indicates the award was split between roughly $1.75 million in compensatory damages and about $7.5 million in punitive damages. The case concerned a 2023 article about a shooting in Tuscaloosa that killed Jamea Harris, a 23-year-old mother. [The Times reported, citing a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity, that Spears had been a passenger in a car at the scene](https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49675770/jury-rules-new-york-s-defamed-alabama-basketball-player). He had not. The paper later appended an editor's note correcting the error. ## What each side said A Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said the paper was ["disappointed the jury found The Times liable for an honest mistake"](https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49675770/jury-rules-new-york-s-defamed-alabama-basketball-player), and the paper has said it is reviewing its legal options, which leaves an appeal open. Spears' attorney, Matt Glover, said he believed [the "verdict will improve journalism throughout the country"](https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49675770/jury-rules-new-york-s-defamed-alabama-basketball-player). Those two statements frame the disagreement precisely. Nobody disputes that the sentence about Spears was wrong. What was contested is whether getting it wrong, in that way, on that sourcing, is something a newspaper should have to pay for. ## Why the standard matters so much American defamation law turns on a distinction that decides most cases before the facts are argued. Under the actual-malice standard set out in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 1964, a public figure suing over a false statement must show the publisher knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true. That is a demanding test, and it is why large US news organizations rarely lose. A private figure faces a much lower bar and generally needs to show only that the publisher was negligent. Reporting on the case indicates [the court treated Spears as a private figure rather than a public one](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/20/new-york-times-loses-defamation-suit-brought-by-co/), despite his having played for a nationally prominent college basketball program. If that classification stands, it does most of the work in explaining the outcome: the Times did not have to be found reckless, only careless. That is also the most likely ground for an appeal. Whether a plaintiff is a public figure is a question courts treat as reviewable, and a member of a high-profile team who was written about in connection with a matter of public concern is precisely the sort of borderline case appellate judges take seriously. ## The Alabama echo There is a genuine historical symmetry here rather than a manufactured one. Sullivan was itself an Alabama case. It arose from a 1960 advertisement in the Times protesting the treatment of civil rights demonstrators, which contained factual errors, and it ended with the Supreme Court constructing the protection that has shielded American publishers ever since. Sixty-two years later, in the same state, a jury reached a different conclusion about what the paper owed a person it had wrongly named. That symmetry should not be overread. Sullivan concerned an elected commissioner suing over criticism of official conduct, which is the core of what the First Amendment protects. This case concerns a young man wrongly connected to a killing. Those are different situations, and the law has always treated them differently. ## What it signals Single jury verdicts are weak evidence about legal trends, and this one may not survive appeal. But it lands in a period when the actual-malice standard is under sustained criticism from several directions, including from judges who have argued the Supreme Court should revisit it. The narrower lesson is about method rather than doctrine. The error came from a single anonymous source, on a sensitive factual point about an identifiable young person, in a story where being wrong carried an obvious and serious cost. Nothing about that requires a change in the law to avoid. ## Sources - [Jury rules New York Times defamed Alabama basketball player](https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/49675770/jury-rules-new-york-s-defamed-alabama-basketball-player) - [The New York Times loses defamation lawsuit in Alabama](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/business/media/new-york-times-defamation-lawsuit-alabama.html) - [New York Times loses defamation suit brought by college basketball player](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/20/new-york-times-loses-defamation-suit-brought-by-co/) - [Jury says the New York Times defamed Alabama basketball player](https://www.wbrc.com/2026/08/21/jury-says-new-york-times-defamed-alabama-basketball-player-with-incorrect-story-about-shooting/)