Legal experts have slammed the Clinton-appointed New York judge who tossed Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times while jurors are still deliberating the case and say he’s effectively hobbled the jury.

‘I would have expected the judge to wait for the jury to return its verdict before ruling on the motion for judgment as a matter of law, because there was no urgency to issuing that ruling,’ attorney Mitchell Epner, of Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC, told Law & Crime on Monday.

‘Nothing would have changed if he had waited for the verdict to have been announced, or for the jury to say that they couldn’t reach a verdict.’…

George Freeman, the executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, argued that although Rakoff acted within the law he had also ‘potentially sown confusion.’

‘He did follow the law, which is what he’s supposed to do. And there is no actual malice according to the evidence,’ Freeman told the New York Times. ‘But generally a judge would hold his views in his pocket.’