Judge Throws Out Palin Libel Case

The judge overseeing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times has dismissed the suit.

U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff said Palin's legal team didn't prove “actual malice” by The Times, which is the standard they had to meet in her case.

Palin sued The New York Times and its former editorial page editor James Bennet over an article published in 2017 that falsely linked her to a 2011 mass shooting that killed six people and injured a sitting congresswoman.

Rakoff's ruling came as a Manhattan jury of five women and four men deliberates over the verdict.

He will allow the jury to continue deliberating until they reach a verdict and dismiss the case once they've done so.

The Hill adds:

The Times later corrected the article, noting that a previous version had “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”

In a dramatic moment last week, Palin took the witness stand and described a feeling of being “powerless” after the editorial's publication.

“It was devastating to read, again, an accusation, a false accusation that I had anything to do with murder, murdering innocent people,” Palin said.

When pressed by Palin's lawyers about why the paper never publicly apologized, Bennet objected, “The feeling of the standards editors, I think, was that of course The Times regrets its errors.” He added, “They're correcting them. That's an extremely painful thing for the journalists and is an expression of regret.”

Many consider an appeal following today's ruling inevitable.