In a bombshell announcement on Monday, senior U.S. district judge Jed Rakoff said he plans to toss out Sarah Palin’s defamation suit against The New York Times––a decision he made while the jury was still deliberating. This ruling, Rakoff explained, was based on his belief that no jury could reasonably prove that the Times and its former editorial page editor James Bennet acted with “actual malice” when it published a 2017 editorial linking Palin’s political action committee to the 2011 mass shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords’s constituent event.
“I think that there is one essential element that plaintiff has not carried its burden with—the portion of actual malice relating to belief in falsity or reckless disregard in falsity,” the federal judge declared before the jury was set to finish deliberating. “My job is to apply the law. The law here sets a very high standard for ‘actual malice,’ and in this case the court finds that that standard has not been met.”
The judge’s announcement suggests that the former Alaska governor and her lawyers did not provide the court with sufficient evidence to prove the Times knowingly published falsehoods or acted recklessly in its op-ed. The original article, titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” asserted that there was a clear “link” to Jared Lee Loughner’s killing of six people at Giffords’s meeting and an electoral map created by Palin’s PAC, which featured crosshairs hovering over the congressional districts of Giffords’s and 19 other Democratic lawmakers. No evidence was ever found connecting Loughner and the Palin map, which the Times conceded when the piece was corrected about 12 hours after its release.
David Axelrod, an attorney representing the Times, said the promptness of the correction showed that the error was not a malicious one. “Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are fragile things,” he said while speaking to the jury on Friday. In his closing arguments, Axelrod asserted that “the First Amendment is so important, that honest mistakes don’t create liability.”
While saying he would dismiss the case on Monday, Rakoff did criticize the Times. “Ms. Palin was subjected to an ultimately unsupported and very serious allegation that Mr. Bennet chose to revisit seven years or so after the underlying events,” he said. “I think this is an example of very unfortunate editorializing on the part of the Times.” Rakoff went on to say that he will formally dismiss the case after the jury reaches a final verdict. Though, even then the case will likely not be over, as Palin’s lawyers are expected to appeal the ruling in the coming days. The jurors, which have yet to finish deliberating, were released late Monday afternoon with Rakoff telling the court, “I love this jury” and wishing them a happy Valentine’s Day. The jury was advised to avoid news about the trial and will resume deliberations first thing Tuesday morning.
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