I mean even if someone was convicted of a crime, they have still always been allowed to proclaim their innocence. Now you don't need to be convicted and you're not allowed to do so?
Proclaiming your innocence and attacking your accuser are two very different things.
You conveniently ignore the fact that the defamation trial didn't occur in a vacuum. The first trial already found that Trump was in fact guilty of the underlying accusation. You can disagree with that verdict all you want, you don't get to pretend it didn't happen or wasn't relevant to the verdict in this case.
Once he was found liable the jury was rightly instructed to proceed on that basis. And it was on that basis where his continued attacks were considered. The overwhelming bulk of the reward to the plaintiff was on punitive grounds, which is certainly appropriate in a case where the defendant continued to attack the plaintiff as the trial was ongoing, including while he was literally sitting in the courtroom, by continuing to ignore the judges instructions and proclaim his innocence to the jury after being told very clearly that was not a valid testimony at that point in the trial, and by walking out during the prosecutions closing argument after being instructed not to interrupt in any way. Trump made a conscious decision to ignore every rule of the trial, signalling as clear as he could have possibly signaled that he saw himself as being immune to the law. He deserved every penny of that verdict.
And just to add to all of this is the impact on Trump's attacks. As was pointed out in a prior trial "when a person commits an act, it is only logical to assume the natural and predictable consequences of said act was the person's intent". Trump knows damn well that his repeated attacks on Carroll would result in his followers stalking and threatening her, which is exactly what happened and Trump has never made any attempt to cool that down. This is exactly what he intended, so yes, he deserved every penny of it.
Stop pretending that the circumstances here are like any other defamation trial we've ever seen. They're not. You accuse us of TDS. TDS is actually buying the utter bullshit talking point that this is all somehow an attack on you. It's not, it's nothing more than a New York billionaire who would never associate himself with someone like you and couldn't care less about you manipulating you into thinking he's fighting for you all while grooming you into giving up your livelihood to fight for him.