Sarah Palin Libel Case Against New York Times Heads To Jury
12.02.2022 - 00:31
/ deadline.com
Attorneys for Sarah Palin and The New York Times wrapped up their case on Friday with lengthy closing arguments, leaving it to jurors to decide whether a faulty 2017 editorial that linked the former governor’s political action committee to a mass shooting was merely “a mess up” or actual malice.
Jurors went into deliberations after they were presented with instructions by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff.
During the trial, James Bennet, who was then the Times opinion editor and also is a defendant in the case, said that he was to blame for inserting, under the pressure of a deadline, sentences that linked the “incitement” of Palin’s PAC to the 2011 Tucson shootings in which six people were killed and congresswoman Gabby Giffords was severely wounded. Palin sued in 2017.
The editorial was written and published online on June 14, 2017, inspired by a shooting earlier in the day: James Hodgkinson opened fire on several Republican members of Congress who had been engaging in practice for a softball game, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).
During closing arguments, Palin’s attorney Kenneth Turkel argued that there was ample evidence that the Times had reckless disregard for the truth, one of the thresholds for winning a libel suit. He noted that Bennet, seeking to find an example of a Republican engaging in “political incitement,” wrote the line in the op-ed even after he ordered research that showed that the link was false. It also included a hyperlink to an ABC News story that said that no link was ever shown between the Palin PAC and the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner.
The attorney for the Times, David Axelrod, told jurors that the op-ed was an “honest mistake” that was quickly corrected.
“There was no conspiracy,” Axelrod