However, Rakoff said in his order that the jurors assured him his decision had not influenced them.
“The jurors repeatedly assured the Court’s law clerk that these notifications had not affected them in any way or played any role whatever in their deliberations,” wrote the judge, who is an appointee of President Bill Clinton and joined the court in 1995.
The judge issued his order Wednesday afternoon after he discussed the issue in an interview with Bloomberg News.
“I’m disappointed that the jurors even got these messages, if they did,” Rakoff said, according to Bloomberg. “I continue to think it was the right way to handle things.”
The judge told the news service that “at most three” of the nine jurors saw the news alerts about his ruling. It is unusual for federal judges to conduct interviews about cases that are pending or when appeals are expected.
Attorneys for Palin declined to comment Wednesday, but her lead lawyer told reporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday that the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee was considering the possibility of filing motions with Rakoff or pursuing an appeal.
“We obviously have our own view of the evidence and the law and the facts that came out during this trial,” Palin attorney Ken Turkel said. “We’re going to evaluate all of our options for appeal, all of our options for further motions practice in court at the trial level.”
Turkel also made clear Palin’s team disagreed with the timing and the substance of Rakoff’s ruling that her side had failed to make out a plausible case that the Times or former editorial page editor James Bennet acted with “actual malice” when publishing a 2017 editorial that tied Palin’s political action committee to the deadly shooting rampage in Tucson six years earlier that killed six people and gravely wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.)
“Obviously, we felt yesterday’s order was disappointing. From our perspective, it was premature,” Turkel said. “We’re going to evaluate all of our options.”
A spokesperson for the Times declined to comment Wednesday on the development.