WORST-KEPT SECRET

Jury in Sarah Palin Case Received Notifications of Judge's Plan to Dismiss Case During Deliberations

Jurors received notification of the plan before they had finished deliberating, but say it hadn't “affected them in any way or played any role whatever in their deliberations.”

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has revealed that several of the jurors who ruled in favor of the New York Times in a libel case brought forth by Sarah Palin received push notifications during the trial notifying them of Rakoff’s plan to potentially dismiss the case. “These jurors reported that although they had been assiduously adhering to the court’s instruction to avoid media coverage of the trial, they had involuntarily received ‘push notifications’ on their smartphones that contained the bottom line of the ruling,” Rakoff wrote on Wednesday. He also said that jurors assured the court’s law clerk that the notifications hadn’t “affected them in any way or played any role whatever in their deliberations.” Rakoff had planned to dismiss the case because Palin’s attorney was unable to prove “actual malice” but in his Monday announcement also said that he would allow the jury to continue deliberating on a verdict because of the likelihood of an appeal. Rakoff said that parties could “promptly initiate” a joint phone call to determine if “further proceedings are appropriate.”