A jury found the New York Times not guilty of libel against former Alaska governor Sarah Palin on Tuesday, one day after U.S. District Court judge Jed Rakoff tossed the suit and ruled that Palin’s attorneys failed to meet the evidentiary standard required to prove the Times acted with “actual malice” in linking Palin’s political action committee to the shooting of former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Rakoff said on Monday that even if the jury declared the Times guilty, he would still dismiss the case.
Rakoff informed the jurors of his decision on Tuesday after the not-guilty verdict was returned.
“You decided the facts, I decided the law; it turns out they were both in agreement, in this case,” declared Rakoff.
A 2017 Times editorial decrying “America’s lethal politics” — published after a left-wing extremist targeted a GOP congressional event and shot Representative Steve Scalise (R., La.) — that referenced Palin’s alleged role in Giffords’ shooting was the proximate cause of the suit. The editorial initially included language linking a graphic circulated by Palin’s PAC, showing 20 Democratic districts, including Giffords’s, under crosshairs, with the motivations of Giffords’s attacker.
The Times corrected the editorial shortly after publication, but Palin sued the paper and former editorial page head James Bennet, who inserted the language linking Palin to the Giffords shooting, for libel.
Palin attorney Ken Turkel argued during closing arguments on Friday that the editorial was an example of the Times‘s disdain for conservatives, and asserted that the Times “demonize[s] the right wing.” Times attorney David Axelrod countered that the editorial constituted an “honest mistake.”
Source: National Review
