New York Times ordered to pay $9.25 million in defamation suit from former Alabama basketball player

The New York Times lost a defamation lawsuit on Thursday that was brought by a former college basketball player. The jury determined that the plaintiff is owed $9.25 million in damages. 

Kai Spears was an 18-year-old freshman walk-on basketball player for the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide when New York Times sports writer Billy Witz falsely identified Spears as being a passenger in the car at the site of a January 2023 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Jamea Harris, Fox News reported. 

The Times issued a lengthy editor's note to the report the following June, but only after Spears filed a defamation lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The note admitted Spears was misidentified as the person in the car. While the Times stated in Witz's article that Spears' father had denied Spears was present, the newspaper didn't believe any update to the story was needed, the note explained. 

Witz, who began reporting for The Times in 2008, relied on one anonymous source who claimed Spears was present at the shooting incident, which the reporter described as a "high-level person, professional."

A Times' spokesperson told Fox that the publication was "disappointed the jury found The Times liable for an honest mistake."