Jury in Palin-N.Y. Times libel trial learned of judge’s plan to throw out suit
Jurors’ having knowledge of the ruling in the middle of deliberations could bolster the ex-governor’s case for a new trial or appeal.
Jurors in former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s libel trial against The New York Times became aware during deliberations that the judge overseeing the case had ruled that it should be thrown out, the judge said in an order on Wednesday.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said that after the jury returned a unanimous verdict in favor of the Times in the case on Tuesday, one of his law clerks learned that some on the panel had received alerts on their phones on Monday when Rakoff announced, outside the presence of the jury, that he planned to toss out the case because Palin’s lawyers had failed to prove their case to the high standard of evidence required in libel suits against public figures.
“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,” the Manhattan-based Rakoff wrote in a two-page order.
While rulings by judges to throw out a case at the close of a civil or criminal jury trial are not uncommon, many legal experts faulted Rakoff for revealing his plan in the middle of the jury’s deliberations. Doing so raised the prospect that jurors would learn of his decision and that it might prompt them to side with the Times regardless of their view of the evidence.
However, Rakoff said in his order that the jurors assured him his decision had not influenced them.
“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,” wrote the judge, who is an appointee of President Bill Clinton and joined the court in 1995.
The judge issued his order Wednesday afternoon after he discussed the issue in an interview with Bloomberg News.
“I’m disappointed that the jurors even got these messages, if they did,” Rakoff said, according to Bloomberg. “I continue to think it was the right way to handle things.”
The judge told the news service that “at most three” of the nine jurors saw the news alerts about his ruling. It is unusual for federal judges to conduct interviews about cases that are pending or when appeals are expected.
Attorneys for Palin declined to comment Wednesday, but her lead lawyer told reporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday that the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee was considering the possibility of filing motions with Rakoff or pursuing an appeal.
“We obviously have our own view of the evidence and the law and the facts that came out during this trial,” Palin attorney Ken Turkel said. “We’re going to evaluate all of our options for appeal, all of our options for further motions practice in court at the trial level.”
Turkel also made clear Palin’s team disagreed with the timing and the substance of Rakoff’s ruling that her side had failed to make out a plausible case that the Times or former editorial page editor James Bennet acted with “actual malice” when publishing a 2017 editorial that tied Palin’s political action committee to the deadly shooting rampage in Tucson six years earlier that killed six people and gravely wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.)
“Obviously, we felt yesterday’s order was disappointing. From our perspective, it was premature,” Turkel said. “We’re going to evaluate all of our options.”
A spokesperson for the Times declined to comment Wednesday on the development.