Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been granted a new trial in her defamation case against The New York Times and its former opinion editor James Bennet, according to an Aug. 28 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
This ruling is the latest development in Palin’s years-long legal battle, which centers on a 2017 editorial published by The NY Times that linked her political action committee to a 2011 shooting that seriously injured then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).
The appellate court’s decision to vacate the previous jury verdict and order a new trial was based on several alleged significant errors during the original trial, including the exclusion of critical evidence, improper jury instructions, and a mid-deliberation ruling by the district court that allegedly undermined the jury’s role.
NY Times Managing Director for External Communications Charlie Stadtlander told The Epoch Times in an email that the court’s decision is “disappointing.”
“We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial,” he said.
Palin said in a post on social media platform X that the decision was “great news.”
The legal dispute began after The NY Times published an editorial titled “America’s Lethal Politics” on June 14, 2017, in the aftermath of a shooting at a congressional baseball practice that injured four people, including Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.).
The editorial alleged a “clear” and “direct” link between the 2011 Giffords shooting in Tucson, Arizona, and a map circulated by Palin’s political action committee.
The map in question depicted crosshairs over 20 congressional districts, including Giffords’s, in what the editorial implied was a form of political incitement.
Palin filed a defamation lawsuit against The NY Times shortly after the editorial’s publication, arguing that it falsely suggested she was directly responsible for the Tucson shooting.
The district court initially dismissed her claim in 2017, but the Second Circuit reinstated it in 2019, leading to a jury trial in 2022.
During the trial, despite that the jury eventually returned a verdict of “not liable” for The NY Times, the district judge had already made a ruling under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50, effectively dismissing the case before the jury concluded its deliberations.
The ruling, combined with other alleged trial errors, led the Second Circuit to call for a new trial.
According to the opinion, the appellate court identified several critical issues that compromised the integrity of the original trial.
The exclusion of evidence that could have demonstrated Bennet’s potential bias or prior knowledge of inaccuracies in the editorial was deemed improper.
The court also highlighted an alleged inaccurate jury instruction regarding the actual malice standard that Palin was required to prove. The court also expressed concern that jurors had learned of the judge’s Rule 50 decision during their deliberations, which could have influenced their verdict.
At the time, Palin told The Epoch Times that she thought the judge’s decision was “very strange,” describing the move as “taking the verdict from the jury.” Her legal team also filed at the time for a new trial and requested that the judge in the first trial be disqualified.
In its ruling, the Second Circuit emphasized the importance of preserving the jury’s role in the judicial process.
“The jury is sacrosanct in our legal system, and we have a duty to protect its constitutional role, both by ensuring that the jury’s role is not usurped by judges and by making certain that juries are provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law,” the court stated.
The case is expected to return to the Southern District of New York for a retrial.
