Sarah Palin wants to disqualify judge who ‘contaminated’ jury in defamation case against The New York Times

Attorneys argue federal judge’s announcement to dismiss complaint tainted verdict as former governor seeks appeal

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has requested the judge who presided over her unsuccessful defamation trial against The New York Times to disqualify himself from the case, arguing that he “contaminated” jurors who delivered the verdict.

Attorneys for Ms Palin – who accused the newspaper of defaming her in a 2017 editorial – pointed to the rare announcement from US District Judge Jed Rakoff to dismiss the case while jurors were still deliberating, according to federal court filings in New York City on 22 March.

They argued his announcement “contaminated” the verdict on 15 February against Ms Palin, after several jurors later admitted that they learned about the judge’s announcement from “push” notifications to their phones.

“A reasonable person fully informed of the facts would question the court’s impartiality and predisposition,” lawyers for Ms Palin wrote.

Ms Palin is appealing the verdict and the judge’s dismissal.

New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades said in a statement that “we remain confident that the judge and jury decided the case fairly and correctly.”

Ms Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate alongside GOP nominee John McCain, sued the newspaper and its then-editorial page editor James Bennet over an editorial that criticised a rise in volatile political rhetoric in the aftermath of a 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball game, characterised by the newspaper’s editorial board as probable evidence of America’s increasingly “vicious” politics.

Though she was not the subject of the editorial, it referenced a map from her political action committee – featuring crosshairs over Democratic-leaning congressional districts – as an example of such rhetoric, pointing to a 2011 shooting in Arizona that killed six people, including a nine-year-old girl, and injured then-congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

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 with a statement that the newspaper “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting” and that it had “incorrectly described” the map. A post on Twitter said that “we got an important fact wrong.”

Jurors were tasked with determining whether the newspaper knowingly and recklessly published false information against her with so-called “actual malice.”

Attorneys for Ms Palin said Judge Rakoff set too high a bar for her to prove the newspaper acted maliciously.

In a written opinion issued on 1 March explaining his decision to dismiss the case, Judge Rakoff said Ms Palin “wholly failed to prove her case even to the minimum standard required by law.”

He wrote: “After reviewing all evidence adduced at trial in the light most favorable to Palin and drawing all reasonable inferences in her favor, the Court concluded that no reasonable jury could find by clear and convincing evidence that Bennet or The New York Times Co knew at the time of publication that the allegedly libelous statements were false or that Bennet thought that the challenged statements were probably false but recklessly proceeded to publish them anyway.”

Judge Rakoff argued that “the more fundamental point is that any effect the push notifications may have had is legally irrelevant” because he had already decided to dismiss the complaint.

“Even if one indulges the implausible hypothesis that the jury would have returned a verdict for Palin absent the news alerts, the operative final judgment would still have been the same: dismissal of Palin’s claim as a matter of law,” he wrote.