A federal appeals court has reopened Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, finding fault with the way a judge announced her intention to dismiss the case while the jury was still deliberating.
“Jurors are sacred in our legal system, and we have a duty to protect their constitutional role by ensuring that their role is not usurped by the judge and by ensuring that jurors are provided with proper evidence and properly instructed on the law,” Circuit Judge John L. Walker wrote in the opinion (read it here) for the three-judge panel.
The case has now been sent back to a lower court for a new trial.
Palin sued the New York Times and its then-opinion editor, James Bennett, over the 2017 editorial.
The June 14, 2017, Times article, written hours after a gunman opened fire at a congressional softball game, detailed the connection between harsh political rhetoric and violence. Bennett said he was responsible for inserting an edit into the article linking Palin’s political action committee to the 2011 mass shooting that left six people dead and severely injured Rep. Gabby Giffords.
In fact, no link was found between the PAC and the shooting, and the Times corrected its story, but Palin filed suit anyway.
As the jury was deliberating in February 2022, Judge Jed Rakoff told the lawyers that he had concluded that Palin had not met the “very high standard of actual malice” and was dismissing the case. The jury continued to deliberate and ultimately reached a unanimous verdict finding the Times and Bennett not liable.
But Walker noted that some jurors reported receiving “push” notifications on their smartphones about Rakoff’s decision.
“Judges have a special influence over juries, so that a verdict reached by a jury knowing what the judge has already announced is likely to be untainted by anything the jury may say at a later hearing,” Walker wrote. “We therefore conclude that on this basis a new trial is warranted.”
Walker also criticized other aspects of the trial, including “erroneous exclusion of evidence, inaccurate jury instructions, [and] Legally incorrect answers to juror questions during deliberations.”
