Federal court green lights new defamation trial between Palin and New York Times

A new defamation trial between former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the New York Times will take place, according to a federal court decision on Wednesday. 

Palin has said that a 2017 editorial connecting her to the shooting of former Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was defamatory. 

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a new trial can move forward. 

Circuit Judge John Walker argued that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan made mistakes, such as excluding evidence, in the previous trial against the New York Times and its former editorial page editor James Bennet, which took place in February 2022.

"Unfortunately, several major issues at trial -- specifically, the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous response to a mid-deliberation jury question, and jurors learning during deliberations of the district court's Rule 50 dismissal ruling -- impugn the reliability of that verdict," read the opinion.