A federal appeals court revived Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times on Wednesday, citing errors by a lower court judge, particularly his decision to dismiss the lawsuit while a jury was deliberating.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan wrote that Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s decision in February 2022 to dismiss the lawsuit mid-deliberations improperly intruded on the jury’s work.

It also found that the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction and an erroneous response to a question from the jury tainted the jury’s decision to rule against Palin. It declined, however, to grant Palin’s request to force Rakoff off the case on grounds he was biased against her. The 2nd Circuit said she had offered no proof.

The libel lawsuit by Palin, a onetime Republican vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, centered on the newspaper’s 2017 editorial falsely linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting, which Palin asserted damaged her reputation and career.

The Times acknowledged its editorial was inaccurate but said it quickly corrected errors it called an “honest mistake” that were never meant to harm Palin.

Shane Vogt, a lawyer for Palin, said in an email that Palin was “very happy with today’s decision, which is a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general.”

“The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury that is ‘provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law,’” Vogt added, quoting in part from the 2nd Circuit ruling.

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, said the decision was disappointing. “We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial,” he said in an email.

The 2nd Circuit, in a ruling written by Judge John M. Walker Jr., reversed the jury verdict, along with Rakoff’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit while jurors were deliberating.

Despite his ruling, Rakoff let jurors finish deliberating and render their verdict, which went against Palin.

The appeals court noted that Rakoff’s ruling made credibility determinations, weighed evidence, and ignored facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly find supported Palin’s case.

It also described how “push notifications” that reached the cellphones of jurors “came as an unfortunate surprise to the district judge.” The 2nd Circuit said it was not enough that the judge’s law clerk was assured by jurors that Rakoff’s ruling had not affected their deliberations.

“Given a judge’s special position of influence with a jury, we think a jury’s verdict reached with the knowledge of the judge’s already-announced disposition of the case will rarely be untainted, no matter what the jurors say upon subsequent inquiry,” the appeals court said.

A 2022 court hearing that freed Adnan Syed from prison violated the legal rights of the victim’s family and must be redone, Maryland’s Supreme Court ruled Friday, marking the latest development in the ongoing legal saga that gained global attention years ago through the hit podcast “Serial.”

The 4-3 ruling means Syed’s murder conviction remains reinstated for the foreseeable future. It comes about 11 months after the court heard arguments last October in a case that has been fraught with legal twists and divided court rulings since Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.

Syed has been free since October 2022, and while the Supreme Court's ruling reinstates his convictions, the justices did not order any changes to his release.

The court concluded that in an effort to remedy what was perceived to be an injustice to Syed, prosecutors and a lower court “worked an injustice” against Lee’s brother, Young Lee. The court ruled that Lee was not treated with “dignity, respect, and sensitivity,” because he was not given reasonable notice of the hearing that resulted in Syed being freed.

The court ruled that the remedy was “to reinstate Mr. Syed’s convictions and to remand the case to the circuit court for further proceedings.”

The court also said Lee would be afforded reasonable notice of the new hearing, “sufficient to provide Mr. Lee with a reasonable opportunity to attend such a hearing in person,” and for him or his counsel to be heard.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Michele Hotten wrote that “this case exists as a procedural zombie.”

“It has been reanimated, despite its expiration,” Hotten wrote. “The doctrine of mootness was designed to prevent such judicial necromancy.”

The latest issue in the case pitted recent criminal justice reform efforts against the legal rights of crime victims and their families, whose voices are often at odds with a growing movement to acknowledge and correct systemic issues, including historic racism, police misconduct and prosecutorial missteps.

The panel of seven judges weighed the extent to which crime victims have a right to participate in hearings where a conviction could be vacated. To that end, the court considered whether to uphold a lower appellate court ruling in 2023 in favor of the Lee family. It reinstated Syed’s murder conviction a year after a judge granted a request from Baltimore prosecutors to vacate it because of flawed evidence.

Syed, 43, has maintained his innocence and has often expressed concern for Lee’s surviving relatives. The teenage girl was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.

Syed was released from prison in September 2022, when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction after city prosecutors found flaws in the evidence.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed President Nicolás Maduro’s claims that he won last month’s presidential election and said voting tallies published online showing he lost by a landslide were forged.

The ruling is the latest attempt by Maduro to blunt protests and international criticism that erupted after the contested July 28 vote in which the self-proclaimed socialist leader was seeking a third, six-year term.

The high court is packed with Maduro loyalists and has almost never ruled against the government.

Its decision, read Thursday in an event attended by senior officials and foreign diplomats, came in response to a request by Maduro to review vote totals showing he had won by more than 1 million votes.

The main opposition coalition has accused Maduro of trying to steal the vote.

Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide and which show opposition candidate Edmundo González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.

“An attempt to judicialize the results doesn’t change the truth: we won overwhelmingly and we have the voting records to prove it,” González, standing before a Venezuelan flag, said in a video posted on social media.

The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility. Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities didn’t release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.

The government has claimed — without evidence — that a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia delayed the vote counting on election night and publication of the disaggregated results.

González was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, a fact noted by the justices, who in their ruling accused him of trying to spread panic.

The former diplomat and his chief backer, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, went into hiding after the election as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout the country protesting the results.

Numerous foreign governments, including the U.S. as well as several allies of Maduro, have called on authorities to release the full breakdown of results.

Gabriel Boric, the leftist president of Chile and one of the main critics of Maduro’s election gambit, lambasted the high court’s certification.

George Santos, the former New York congressman who spun lies into a brief political career, pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, acknowledging that he allowed his ambitions to cloud his judgment.

Santos, 36, is likely to spend at least six years in prison and owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution. His federal fraud case, which led to his expulsion from Congress, was just weeks away from going to trial.

“I betrayed the trust of my constituents and supporters. I deeply regret my conduct,” the New York Republican said, his voice trembling as he entered the plea in a Long Island courtroom.

Santos, 36, said he accepted responsibility for his crimes and intends to make amends. He faces more than six years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines and owes at least $370,000 in restitution.

Senior Federal Judge Joanna Seybert scheduled sentencing for Feb. 7.

Santos was indicted on felony charges that he stole from political donors, used campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses, lied to Congress about his wealth and collected unemployment benefits while actually working.

Santos was expelled from the U.S. House after an ethics investigation found “overwhelming evidence” that he had broken the law and exploited his public position for his own profit.

The case has been set to go to trial in early September. If that had happened, federal prosecutors said Monday that they were prepared to call some 40 witnesses, including members of Santos’ campaign, employers and family members.

Santos was once touted as a rising political star after he flipped the suburban district that covers the affluent North Shore of Long Island and a slice of the New York City borough of Queens in 2022.

But his life story began unraveling even before he was sworn into office. At the time, reports emerged that he had lied about having a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree along with other questions swirling about his biography.

New questions then emerged about his campaign funds.

He was first indicted on federal charges in May 2023, but refused to resign from office.

Santos had previously maintained his innocence, though he said in an interview in December that a plea deal with prosecutors was “not off the table.”

Asked if he was afraid of going to prison, he told CBS 2 at the time: “I think everybody should be afraid of going to jail, it’s not a pretty place and uh, I definitely want to work very hard to avoid that as best as possible.”

Separately Monday, in Manhattan federal court, Judge Denise Cote tossed out a lawsuit in which Santos claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, ABC and Disney committed copyright infringement and unjustly enriched themselves at his expense by using videos he made on the Cameo app for a “Jimmy Kimmel Live” segment. The judge said it was clear that Kimmel used the clips, which were also posted to YouTube, for the purposes of criticism and commentary, which is fair use.

Santos had begun selling personalized videos on Cameo in December shortly after his ouster from Congress. He subsequently launched, then quickly abandoned, a longshot bid to return to Congress as an independent earlier this year.

The fraud trial against former U.S. Rep. George Santos, slated to start in a matter of weeks, is coming into focus after a federal judge ruled Tuesday that jurors will have their identities kept secret from the public.

They won’t, however, be required to fill out a written questionnaire gauging their opinions of Santos when they arrive for jury selection Sept. 9, as his lawyers had requested.

Judge Joanna Seybert said during a brief hearing in federal court on Long Island that she agreed with the government’s assessment that a questionnaire would only bog the proceedings down.

She said questioning each potential juror in person would allow her and both sides to ask more varied and probing questions to elicit more truthful responses.

Prosecutors told the judge the trial could last three weeks because they expect to call at least three dozen witnesses, including some victims of Santos’ alleged crimes.

Santos has pleaded not guilty to a range of financial crimes, including lying to Congress about his wealth, collecting unemployment benefits while actually working, and using campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses such as designer clothing.

Seybert urged both sides to work together to “streamline” the proceedings where possible.

“Make me hopeful. Seriously,” she said. “Sit down and discuss what is absolutely necessary.”

Santos, who was dressed in a blue suit, declined to speak with reporters outside the courthouse after the hearing, the last expected before the trial.

But when asked whether he believed his client could receive a fair trial, Santos’ lawyer Robert Fantone said, “I think we’re going to be alright.”

In court, Santos’ lawyers pushed back at claims prosecutors made in prior legal filings that they’re not participating fully in the required pretrial document-sharing process known as discovery.

Prosecutors this month said they’ve turned over more than 1.3 million pages of records, while defense lawyers have produced just five pages. But when pressed by the judge, Santos’ lawyers maintained that they’ve turned over every document in their possession.