BECKLEY, W.Va. — A former Marshall basketball player who was incorrectly linked to an Alabama murder scene has secured a landmark $9.25 million jury award in a defamation suit against the New York Times.
Kai Spears played for the University of Alabama during the 2023-24 season. His father is former Marshall University Director of Athletics Christian Spears. The defamation suit came after reporting on the January 2023 murder of Jamea Harris, 23, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The story rocked the sports world with the shocking allegations that Darius Miles, an Alabama basketball player at the time, was involved in the incident. Miles and another man, Michael Davis, were arrested and charged with getting into an altercation with Harris’ boyfriend, leading to a shootout that claimed Harris’ life. Davis was charged with capital murder.
Beckley-based attorney Stephen New said he received a call from a “frantic” Christian Spears months later. The then-Marshall AD told New that the New York Times reported that his son, Kai, was a passenger in the car at the scene of the crime.
New said on MetroNews “Midday” Monday that the Times reporter made some missteps with that story.
“The article had one not-even-anonymous source,” New said. “It was an anonymous source of an anonymous source that no one at the New York Times ever spoke to. They only learned the person’s name the morning the article came out. The sports editor had decided they were going to press regardless.”
According to New, the reporting about Spears was untrue and extremely damaging. While the Times issued a “minor retraction” in the subsequent days following the initial report, New said the damage was done.
“It was saying that Kai was ‘involved’ in the murder, I think it was what really drove the point home,” New said. “That’s what was so wrong about the article. He wasn’t listed as a potential victim of gunfire or a witness to the event. The article said he was involved in murder.”
That’s when New got involved with legal action. Three years later, a federal jury in Alabama, ruled in favor of New and Spears in the defamation case.
The tragedy happened the night after an Alabama basketball game as the players were celebrating a blowout 106-66 win over LSU. Standout Brandon Miller was also linked to the scene and testified during Davis’ trial. He reportedly drove Miles to the scene and said he was unaware that Miles had a gun in the car.
New said that Spears had partied with his teammates that night but wasn’t at the scene of the crime.
“He was there, just a few minutes before, he almost got into Miller’s car when it went to the other bar,” New said. “That was the legal defense and obviously the jury didn’t think much of that.”
Spears wound up transferring to Marshall after one season at Alabama. He played for the Thundering Herd each of the last two seasons before transferring again to West Liberty. He’ll play his senior season with the Hilltoppers this winter.
New said that the pushback against the NYT’s report didn’t initially change the company’s public comments.
“When the denials started coming out, the anonymous sources said to the reporter, ‘well, maybe we were wrong,'” New said. “The New York Times is telling ESPN, the AP, everyone, ‘we’re confident in our reporting, we stand behind it’ and behind the scene, their own sources are admitting that they were likely wrong.”
New noted that it’s rare for the New York Times to lose a case.
“Since the late 1800s, and all of that is true,” New said. “They don’t lose defamation cases very often. I think this was the fourth one since 1851 that they had lost.”