NYT CRUSHED In Rare Defamation Beatdown

A jury in Alabama just did something no court had done to the New York Times in more than fifty years: it found the paper liable for defamation and ordered it to pay millions.

Story Snapshot

A Tuscaloosa jury ordered the New York Times to pay former Alabama basketball walk-on Kai Spears more than $9 million after ruling the paper defamed him.
The 2023 article wrongly placed Spears in Brandon Miller’s car at the scene of a deadly shooting that killed Jamea Harris.
The Times corrected the story within days of Spears filing suit, but the case still went to a jury trial.
Legal experts note this is the paper’s first defamation loss in over 50 years, a rare outcome given the tough legal bar public-adjacent plaintiffs must clear.

What The Times Got Wrong About A College Freshman

In March 2023, the New York Times published a story tying Kai Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman walk-on for the Crimson Tide, to the scene of a fatal shooting in Tuscaloosa. The article claimed Spears was in Brandon Miller’s car when the shooting happened, an event that left Jamea Harris dead. Spears was not there. He sued for libel and false light in 2023, saying the false report wrecked his reputation before he ever got a chance to build one.

All his family asked of the New York Times was a retraction and an apology. Instead, they went to court and won nearly a $10 million settlement for defamation. https://t.co/KDBnBNHQuj

— Harry Minium Jr. (@Harry_MiniumODU) August 21, 2026

Two days after Spears filed his lawsuit, the Times corrected the article. The paper said its original story was wrong and pointed to a sworn affidavit and fresh newsroom reporting as the reason for the change. The correction later clarified that the person actually in the car was Cooper Lee, a student manager for the team, not Spears. Alabama’s athletic director and Spears’s own father had denied the claim from the start, but the paper initially stood by its reporting anyway.

A Reporter Apologizes, A Jury Decides

The case didn’t end with a correction. A federal judge in Tuscaloosa denied summary judgment for both sides in late 2023, sending the dispute to trial. During testimony, Times reporter Billy Witz apologized to Spears directly from the witness stand, saying he wanted to “own up to it” for misidentifying him. The Times argued the story was still substantially true because Spears was somehow “involved” in events before the shooting. The jury didn’t buy it.

After weeks of testimony, the jury sided with Spears and ordered the Times to pay roughly $9.25 million in damages, according to Patch, which first reported the verdict; al.com put the figure slightly higher at $9.35 million. Either way, it’s a rare and expensive defeat for one of the most powerful newsrooms in the country, one that built its legal reputation defending press freedom in the landmark 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan.

Why This Verdict Actually Matters

That 1964 Supreme Court case set the standard media defendants have hidden behind for decades. Public figures suing for defamation must prove “actual malice,” meaning the publisher knew a statement was false or recklessly ignored the truth, not just careless. Mistaken identity alone usually isn’t enough to clear that bar. That’s exactly why this verdict stands out. A jury looked at a college freshman, a corrected story, and an apology from the reporter himself, and decided the paper crossed the line anyway.

The Times has signaled it plans to fight the verdict, arguing the damages award isn’t supported by the evidence. Legal commentators expect an appeal, and sports law analysts have already flagged the case as one to watch through the courts. For a newspaper that has spent six decades citing its own Supreme Court victory as a shield, losing to an 18-year-old walk-on is a stinging reminder that even the strongest legal protections have limits when a newsroom gets the basic facts wrong and takes too long to fix it.

BREAKING: 🇺🇸 New York Times has been ordered to pay almost $10 million to an ex-Alabama basketball player they falsely accused of a murder.

The Times had NEVER lost a defamation lawsuit over any of its own articles in over 50 years, until now. pic.twitter.com/8066LDHguq

— Coinvo (@Coinvo) August 21, 2026

Whatever happens on appeal, the underlying lesson isn’t complicated. A young athlete with no public platform got smeared by one of the biggest names in journalism, watched his name get tied to a killing he had nothing to do with, and had to spend years in court just to get accountability. That’s not a First Amendment problem. That’s a basic fairness problem, and a jury of Alabamians said so loud and clear.