The jurors, who had been deliberating since Friday, handed down their decision after Judge Jed Rakoff said he would reject the 2008 Republican presidential candidate in any case.
In this case, the former governor of Alaska had already lost in a first trial in August 2017.
It all started with a June 2017 editorial in the New York Times, which denounced an attack perpetrated by a lunatic who had opened fire on elected Republicans playing baseball near Washington.
The newspaper had linked another shooting, in 2011, of an elected Democrat from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, to an advertisement by a committee in support of Sarah Palin, in which the victim's constituency was designated by a sign resembling a line of sight.
The next day, the "NYT" had corrected its editorial, admitting that there was no evidence that the shooter who killed six people and seriously injured Gabrielle Giffords had been prompted to act by the publicity of the support committee.
During this new civil trial, Sarah Palin said she felt "disarmed" in the face of the 2017 editorial written knowingly according to her.
The New York Times has always pleaded good faith.
The case was emblematic of freedom of expression and of the press to write about public figures.
In a famous 1964 Supreme Court decision ("New York Times Co. v. Sullivan") America's highest court set the bar high for an official to win a libel suit.
It is necessary to prove a "genuine malice" of the press organ which would have published information "in the knowledge that it is false or with a total disregard for the truth".
Judge Rakoff found that Sarah Palin's lawyers did not demonstrate this bad faith.
But he still let the jury deliberate until the end, believing that the jurors' decision would be useful for a possible new trial.
© 2022 AFP