On Monday, U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin requested a U.S. Court to grant her a new trial after she lost the earlier one against the New York Times. She also wanted the disqualification of the judge who was overseeing the trial. The talk of a new trial began last week and now it is a possibility.
Earlier, attorneys for the former governor of Alaska had said that they would move forward despite losing the defamation case. They said that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff had made a decision to dismiss the case, before the jury had completed its deliberations.
The jury reached a verdict in favor of the New York Times as they dismissed her arguments that the outlet and its then editor had defamed her. However, before the jury could reach a verdict, they reportedly received push notifications that the judge had already made his decision. He had decided that the case did not have merit. Palin’s lawyers say that this decision could have influenced the jurors’ verdict, although the clerk that it did not affect their verdict.
The June 2017 editorial had incorrectly linked Palin with a 2011 mass shooting. During the course of the shooting, six people lost their lives and Gabby Giffords, who was a congresswoman at that time, had been seriously injured.
The next day, the Times corrected the earlier article, which said that Palin’s political action committee (PAC) had helped contribute to violence as it had circulated a map of electoral districts. It put Giffords and others under stylized crosshairs.
The Times acknowledged that it had made a mistake in its description of the map as well as any link to the shooting. The newspaper said that that the mistake was unintentional.
During a February 23 hearing, Judge Rakoff said that a written opinion explaining the dismissal of the Palin case would be issued by him on March 1.
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