Before the jury rendered its verdict in favor of The New York Times in Sarah Palin’s libel case, some of its members say that they were tipped to the judge’s plan to dismiss the case.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff revealed on Wednesday that several jurors volunteered to the law clerk that they learned of his plan to toss out the lawsuit, on the grounds that Palin’s attorneys failed to prove “actual malice” during the trial. Rakoff announced his decision on Monday, but said he would continue to allow the jury to deliberate and reach a verdict because of the likelihood of an appeal.
“These jurors reported that although they had been assiduously adhering to the court’s instruction to avoid media coverage of the trial, they had involuntarily received ‘push notifications’ on their smartphones that contained the bottom line of the ruling,” Rakoff wrote.
He added that the jurors “repeatedly assured the court’s law clerk that these notifications had not affected them in any way or played any role whatever in their deliberations.”
The jury’s verdict was unanimous, and likely gave the Times a more solid legal footing in an appeal. But Rakoff’s revelation opens up the possibility of Palin’s team using the information in further motions or on an appeal.
In his filing, Rakoff noted that none of the parties objected to his plan to reveal his decision on whether to dismiss the case and still let the jury render its own verdict. But he wrote that parties could still “promptly initiate” a joint phone conference “to discuss whether any further proceedings are appropriate.”
Palin sued the times over a June 14, 2017 Times editorial, written hours after a shooter opened fire on a congressional softball game, that delved into harsh political rhetoric and its links to violence. James Bennet, then the Times Opinion Editor and a defendant in the case, said he was responsible for inserting an edit into the story that linked Palin’s political action committee to a 2011 mass shooting, in which six people were killed and Rep. Gabby Giffords was severely wounded.
The original Times editorial, headlined “America’s Lethal Politics,” read, “Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.”
In fact, no link was ever established, and the Times issued corrections. But Palin still sued.