Sarah Palin’s New York Times defamation case retrial heads to opening statements

Opening statements are set to begin on Tuesday in the retrial of Sarah Palin's lawsuit accusing The New York Times of defaming the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate in a 2017 editorial about gun control.

Palin, 61, who was unsuccessful in her 2008 bid for the second-highest US office along with running mate John McCain, lost her first trial against The New York Times and former editorial page editor James Bennet in 2022. However, the second US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan last August decided the verdict was tainted by several rulings by the presiding judge and ordered a retrial.

The opening statements were scheduled to start at 9.30am before US district judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan. A nine-person jury consisting of five women and four men is due to hear testimony expected to last about a week before opening deliberations.

Palin sued the newspaper after it published an editorial on June 14 2017, bearing the headline "America's Lethal Politics" that wrongly suggested she may have incited a January 2011 mass shooting in an Arizona parking lot. Six people were killed and Democratic US representative Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded.

Bennet had added language, he said under deadline pressure, identifying a "clear" link between the shooting and a map from Palin's political action committee that put Giffords and other Democrats under crosshairs.

The New York Times quickly corrected the editorial and apologised, but Palin said the reputational harm and mental anguish she suffered justify compensatory and punitive damages. Spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander has said Palin's lawsuit concerned "a passing reference to an event in an editorial" that was not about her.

"That reference was an unintended error, and quickly corrected," Stadtlander said. "We're confident we will prevail."

In reviving Palin's case, the second circuit said Rakoff wrongly excluded evidence she offered to show Bennet knew she did not incite the shooting. It also faulted Rakoff's excluding evidence about Bennet's relationship with his brother Michael Bennet, the Democratic senator from Colorado, that Palin said could establish bias.

Palin has viewed her case as a vehicle to overturn New York Times v Sullivan, a landmark 1964 US supreme court ruling. The supreme court in that case set a standard that to win a defamation suit, a public figure must demonstrate the offending statement was made with "actual malice", meaning with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard as to whether it was false.

The second circuit, however, said Palin waived the argument by waiting too long to challenge Sullivan's "actual malice" standard. The US supreme court on March 24 turned away a bid by casino mogul Steve Wynn to roll back defamation protections established under New York Times v Sullivan, a standard also questioned by President Donald Trump.

Palin served as Alaska's governor from 2006 to 2009. McCain, who served as a Republican senator from Arizona, chose her as his vice-presidential running mate in the 2008 election in which they lost to Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Reuters