Jurors in Sarah Palin case received push alerts about judge’s decision but news did not impact verdict

Unanimous jury found that newspaper editorial and editor at centre of trial did not defame ex-Alaska governor

Sarah Palin leaves US District Court in Manhattan following a verdict in her defamation case against The New York Times. (REUTERS)

Several jurors in Sarah Palin’s defamation case against The New York Times received push notifications to their phone after the judge signalled he would be dismissing the case, according to the judge who presided over the closely watched trial.

While the jury was absent from the courtroom on 14 February, US District Judge Jed Rakoff determined that no reasonable jury would find that the newspaper and editor at the centre of the trial acted with actual malice in publishing a 2017 editorial.

On Tuesday, jurors reached their verdict, finding that the newspaper and then-editorial editor James Bennet did not defame Ms Palin in the editorial, which falsely linked a map from her political action committee to a 2011 shooting that killed six people and injured then-US Rep Gabby Giffords.

In a note to the court on Wednesday, Judge Rakoff reported that several jurors had involuntarily received push alerts on their phone after the judge told both parties that he intended to toss out Ms Palin’s complaint.

The jurors “repeatedly assured the Court’s law clerk that these notifications had not affected them in any way.”

After the judge signalled his decision on Monday, New York Times attorney David Axelrod asked the judge to bring jurors back into the courtroom to remind them to avoid looking at news about the case.

In remarks to attorneys on Monday, Judge Rakoff said he believes the case to be “an example of very unfortunate editorializing” but that it did not rise to the standard of “actual malice” – a standard established in a landmark US Supreme Court ruling on libel cases in 1967.

Jurors reached their unanimous decision the following day.

The editorial at the centre of the trial – “America’s Lethal Politics” – was written in the aftermath of a 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball game and criticised a rise in volatile political rhetoric.

Ms Palin was not the subject of the editorial, but a map from her political action committee – featuring crosshairs over Democratic-leaning congressional districts – was cited as an example, pointing to the 2011 shooting in Arizona.

In the course of editing the story, Mr Bennet added a sentence saying that “the link to political incitement was clear” – which Ms Palin believes had falsely implied a causal link between herself and the 2011 shooting.

The editorial was corrected hours later, and the court heard testimony from New York Times writers about the editorial process and the mistakes made in handling the editorial, as well as efforts to correct it.