From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, February thirteen. A judge who was sued by a man he wrongfully convicted has won the right to appeal to the High Court. It'll be a landmark hearing over judges liability for their decisions. That's an exclusive life now at the Australian dot Com dot u will sponsors
and the Matilda's stick with injured captain Sam Kerr. She's had a victory in London's Kingston Crown Court where a jury found her not guilty of racially abusing a police officer by calling him stupid and white. But Kerr has come off as a bit of a brat today, her secret attempt to get the matter thrown out of court and the reputational hit she's taking. Before we begin, there's
swearing in this episode. You've probably heard the highlights of Matilda's Captain Sam Kurr's drunken early morning tirade in a London police station.
As a honestly, you have a fucking stupid and wife.
Okay. That came from a short cut of the audio released by Kingston Crown Court. During Sam Kurr's trial for racially abusing officer Stephen Lovell. Later in the trial, the court released a thirty minute cut of Kerr in the cop shop, which makes for a tough Listen. Yeah, like, I'm going to post this Twitter.
The best lawyers you're sack saying you're literally privileged person, You're literally a white privilege.
I'm not paying for.
Oh I know, to four am in the morning and get the Chelsea lawyers on these.
Yes, I'm not taking the brunt of this. Kerr was acquitted by the jury, but the trial has cost a fortune in legal fees and is likely to cost ker something even more valuable, her reputation.
Matilda's fans have been left stunned after it emerged Captain Sam Kerr faced to London court overnight changed with harassing a police officer. Uk Met Police have released a statement this morning revealing that Sam Kerr was charged under Section four A of the Public Order Act that involves the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior.
In breaking news, Sam Kerr has been found not guilty of racially aggravated harassment by a London jury. Jacqueline Magney is the Australian's year of correspondent and she's been in London for this trial. Jack. I know you weren't a member of the jury, and of course in England, just like in Australia, juries aren't supposed to tell what happened in the jury room. But giving your best guess, why do you think this jury acquitted Sam Kerr?
I think there were two issues here. One was whether they believed the police officer, Stephen Lovell, whether he actually suffered because of the racial or the alleged racial insults. He was a very kind of straight up and down witness and said he was hurt and humiliated, but it lacked a little bit of passion about what he felt.
He didn't take any time off work, and also he gave that evidence in a written statement ten months after the event, when the Crown Prosecution Service wanted more information to go forward with the charge. So I think that may have played a little bit on the jury's mind. And I also think that the jury really felt a
little bit sorry for Sam Kurve. I think that they could put themselves in her situation that they realized she and Christi Mueus were genuinely scared and that the lead up to her swearing at the police officers may have been justified.
Jack, You've written in your piece for The Australian about this, about how Sam Kerr arrived every morning in a kind of people mover or organized by Chelsea and jogged up the stairs of the court flanked by a couple of security guards. What do you think we've learned about Sam Kerr in her behavior during this trial.
Well, we know she can swear. Also, I think she lacks a little bit of perspective because when it was put to her several times in the witness box whether now that she knew that the taxi driver had rung the police twice during the journey, he was so concerned about their behavior, of them standing in the back of the cab and kicking off, which saw some extensive damage to the taxi ultimately, and she just dismissed the taxi driver,
said he was irrelevant. She did not concede that perhaps she had misinterpreted what had gone on, and she didn't offer any perspective on what went on other than she was just scared. And that's all the viewpoint that she felt that she could offer about that night. Now, of course, she was very drunk, and the evidence showed in some inconsistencies in the evidence that perhaps she couldn't recall everything as best as what she perhaps claimed she could because
there was some inconsistencies. So I think that sam Kerr, if she reflects truly back on what has happened, I think that she may concede that perhaps she made a few little errors that night herself. Yeah, looking at.
How sam Kerr behaved in and around the court and on that body worn footage that we saw played to the jury, is your perspective that she was behaving like a bit of a brat or can it be explained as something more innocent, it was just a drunken night out.
Well, I think it's both. Really. I think that when you've had a few drinks, someone's character does tend to change. And as marvelous as she is on the football field, she's not marvelous of it after she's had a lot of drinks. And I think that we saw that the evidence on that video is shocking and very unattractive, And even her own lawyer told the jury that legal counsel was not hiding away from just how ugly that was portrayed.
And how it portrays her and really now, even though she's one in Kingston Crown Court, I don't think she's one in the court of public opinion. And I think that most people who've seen that video will now form a different opinion of what they perhaps thought of her before the trial.
Yeah, of course she's been acquitted, which she might think is a justification of her decision to plead not guilty and to see it through to a full trial. But this is someone who's advised by Chelsea's very expensive media managers. Football Australia has media managers who would have been advising her. She of course had engaged her own reputational expert, as
you've written in The Australian. Why didn't any of those people tell her to plead guilty a year ago and just make this go away so that that body worn footage would never appear.
Well, not only would that body worn footage never appeared, we would never have known about the case because when it appeared in Wimbledon Magistrates Court, it had not made the media. People were not aware of it and it would have just quietly gone away. I think perhaps she was receiving legal advice that if she had accepted a cause or accepted a guilty plead, she would have been slapped across the risk and given a fine, maybe some community service at worst. That it could impact on her
ability to travel around the world. So maybe she felt that her career could be affected if she had some kind of criminal record in that sense, and so she also going to the Crown Court. She's before a jury and in the meantime, she had also tried to have the case thrown out of court because of the extra evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service had sought to get further statements from people involved in the case. They were accusing the police of abusive process and wanted it thrown out.
Now we couldn't report that at the time it was under quite heavy reporting restrictions, but now that the jury has made its verdict we can now report on this. So she was trying to get the case thrown out so no one would know about it, and it was a bit of a lottery for her. So in the end she had to turn up in court. We all saw that footage, but she does not have a criminal record at all.
Coming up, What will sponsors and football bosses make of Ker? Now you've covered sport for many years. You've got to know the most famous athletes in the world. She has sponsorships as well as contracts with Chelsea of course, and with the Matildas. How do you think this will affect her bankability and her reputation, her ability to make a living apart from just by scoring goals.
I think in the short term there won't be any impact at all because the current sponsors will honor their contracts. I think what will happen is down the track that you'll find new sponsorship or renewals will be a lot more difficult. That sponsors will think we can go to someone else. They'll find other options, and I think that this will be quite damaging financially for her in the long term, not in the short term at all. And I think that she's coming into a different stage in
her life now. She's about to have a baby, her partner's six months pregnant, and her footballing career. She's been off the field for a year. She's really got to prove herself now that she's in some kind of shape and that she's able to return to her best with her footballing career. So she's out of real crossroads at the moment and will be yet to be seen another
twelve months. If we have this conversation, it'll be interesting to see whether she's bounced back in the football sense and also just dealing with a new family life.
Finally, Jack, in your reporting from Britain and in my reading of the UK media, I see a lot of reports of the policing of language, of the criminalization of language. We've seen a prominent columnist visited by police and threatened with charges over a tweet that she made.
Now you may have been following the case of Allison Pearson, the Telegraph journalist who got a visit from the police over a tweet that she made and deleted some time ago, and Essex Police have made a statement saying they have reviewed this case, having sought advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, they have advised that no charges should be brought in this matter.
With is there a climate in Britain now where freedom of speech is being curtailed do you think? And is this part of that trend or is the Sam Kirk case part of something different here?
Well, in the UK they have something called their non crime hate offenses, where it's perceived that if you are hostile or prejudiced against somebody on the basis of race or ethnicity or six suality that you can be recorded and it's meant to be a little bit of an alert for the police that to keep track on people that might be a little bit of concern and maybe
perhaps lean to some kind of extremes. But what we've found is that the police have been very vigilant about this and taking it to an extreme that perhaps the lawmakers didn't intend it to be. So it's been a political issue. And you've mentioned Alison Pearson, who is a columnist who was accused of a tweet that she made in good faith and that's what she believed, and yet she was deemed to be this could have been a
non criminal hate crime. So it's one of these things that in the UK it's taken incredibly seriously, the whole issue of race. But people know this. They know that if they accuse somebody of an insult and happened to put a color on it, whether that's black or white, you're in trouble and it is perceived to be an insult and it is perceived to be the wrong thing to do. So I sense over here it's a lot
more sensitive than what it is in Australia. And in Australia I feel that people would say I'll just grow a thick skin, But in Britain it's very much seen as something to be aware of and conscious of and sensitive to.
Jacqueline Magnet is The Australian's You're a Correspondent. You can read all her reporting, plus dispatches from our network of journalists around the world, right now at The Australian dot com dot au