Josh Koskoff, the lawyer for the families of the Sandy Hook victims, did what most thought was impossible. He prevailed in a lawsuit against Remington Arms, the company that manufactured and marketed the AR-15 rifle that was used to murder 20 children, between six and seven years old, and six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. But obtaining justice for the families wasn’t easy.

In part 1 of our conversation with Josh, we talk about the lawsuit. In part 2, we talk with Josh about the lawsuit he brought against Alex Jones of Info Wars, who said the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.

The massacre occurred on December 14, 2012. Before driving to the school, Adam Lanza, the gunman, fatally shot his mother. He killed himself after killing the 26 students and staff members. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in Connecticut history and the deadliest at an elementary school in U.S. history.

In December 2014, nine families filed suit in Connecticut against Bushmaster, Remington Arms, Camfour, a distributor of firearms, and the store where Lanza's rifle was purchased. The case was brought as an exemption under the 2005 Federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which generally prohibits lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

The families claimed that the AR-15 was suitable only for military and police use and that Remington inappropriately marketed it to civilians. Filing the complaint in Connecticut was the beginning of a seven-year saga. Remington tried to move the case to federal court and to have the case dismissed. There was much legal maneuvering. Eventually, Remington persuaded the trial court to dismiss the case.

The families appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court. The court decided in a 4–3 vote to reverse parts of the trial court's rulings and sent the case back to the trial court for additional hearings. Remington asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review the decision, but the Supreme Court declined.

In July 2021, Remington again asked the trial judge to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge denied Remington’s request. The next day, Remington offered $33 million to be shared by the nine families. In early 2022, Remington agreed to settle for $73 million.

Is money the determining factor to school districts producing students who perform well? Surprisingly, the answer is no. If money alone were the key, a small town like Steubenville, Ohio, in Jefferson County on the Ohio River and part of the Rust Belt, would not perform as well as Upper Arlington, Ohio, an affluent community.

No doubt, adequate funding is important, but other factors are equally important, such as whether a child’s basic needs in order to thrive and succeed in the classroom are met. Many children are part of families that live in a van or perhaps in abandoned buildings. Not all children have what many take for granted, like electricity, running water or heat. Some may not eat regularly and aren’t clothed properly.

And then there’s the matter of social capital, that is, those community connections a family has. Steubenville provides a good example. Based on an audit of the Ohio Department of Education conducted by the state auditor, published in 2021, Steubenville ranks in the top 10 percent of all Ohio school districts in terms of performance. And it does so spending far less money per student than Upper Arlington.

The reason Steubenville is able to spend less money on education and still achieve high performance scores is strong community fabric. When you have social capital and those close connections that exist when adults take an interest in the life of students and teachers, students perform well.

One rural district has a practice of ensuring that all new teachers ride on the school bus to get a sense for how their students live. Think about what that level of understanding does for a teacher.

Listen to our conversation with Tracy Nájera, Ph.D., and Howard Fleeter, Ph.D.

Tracy has committed her professional career to improving the lives of children and their families, especially those most vulnerable in society. Her experience spans research, program management and implementation and public policy. For most of her career, Tracy has worked in education policy, tackling issues such as school funding, professional learning and human capital in education.

Howard has worked extensively for more than 25 years with Ohio education policy-makers to improve the state's school funding system and is the owner of the state and local government finance and tax policy consulting firm Howard Fleeter & Associates. He serves as a research consultant on education finance and policy issues for the Ohio Education Policy Institute.

Statistics show that between two and five percent of those incarcerated were wrongly convicted and are actually innocent. Can you imagine?

How do the wrongly convicted win their freedom? It’s a long and arduous process that begins with a committed attorney and, often, those attorneys are assisted by the nationwide organization, the Innocence Project.

One of those committed attorneys is our guest Charlie Weiss, a long time civil law lawyer in St. Louis, who later in his career was drawn to this work. Often the wrongfully convicted have been in prison for 20 years or more, and their families have exhausted all of resources to help with the person’s defense, and they’re all exhausted from the stress and frustration.

It takes great resources to handle these cases, and it helps if you’re part of a large firm that can commit manpower and has the assets needed to hire experts, conduct DNA testing, etc. And it takes years to cross the finish line. Perseverance is the order of the day.

The process is challenging for two reasons. The first is the judicial system’s reluctance to reevaluate a case. It's as if the system is saying, “We've tried this case. We’re done. We must have gotten it right.” Finality matters, and, besides, what trial judge wants to admit that an error was made in his court? Which is to say, it’s often an appellate court that orders a trial court take a second look at a case.

And there’s the matter of politics. Prosecuting attorneys get elected based on the convictions they win. Assisting someone getting released from prison doesn’t result in votes. The Missouri Attorney General's office has a policy that it will oppose every habeas corpus case brought—post trial proceedings to seek to overturn a conviction—regardless of how good the evidence is. “They just automatically oppose it,” Charlie told us.

Listen to our conversation with Charlie.