Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, February thirteen. A judge who was sued by
Speaker 1: a man he wrongfully convicted has won the right to
Speaker 1: appeal to the High Court. It'll be a landmark hearing
Speaker 1: over judges liability for their decisions. That's an exclusive life
Speaker 1: now at the Australian dot Com dot u will sponsors
Speaker 1: and the Matilda's stick with injured captain Sam Kerr. She's
Speaker 1: had a victory in London's Kingston Crown Court where a
Speaker 1: jury found her not guilty of racially abusing a police
Speaker 1: officer by calling him stupid and white. But Kerr has
Speaker 1: come off as a bit of a brat today, her
Speaker 1: secret attempt to get the matter thrown out of court
Speaker 1: and the reputational hit she's taking. Before we begin, there's
Speaker 1: swearing in this episode. You've probably heard the highlights of
Speaker 1: Matilda's Captain Sam Kurr's drunken early morning tirade in a
Speaker 1: London police station.
Speaker 2: As a honestly, you have a fucking stupid and wife.
Speaker 1: Okay. That came from a short cut of the audio
Speaker 1: released by Kingston Crown Court. During Sam Kurr's trial for
Speaker 1: racially abusing officer Stephen Lovell. Later in the trial, the
Speaker 1: court released a thirty minute cut of Kerr in the
Speaker 1: cop shop, which makes for a tough Listen. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to post this Twitter.
Speaker 2: The best lawyers you're sack saying you're literally privileged person,
Speaker 2: You're literally a white privilege.
Speaker 3: I'm not paying for.
Speaker 4: Oh I know, to four am in the morning and
Speaker 4: get the Chelsea lawyers on these.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm not taking the brunt of this. Kerr was
Speaker 1: acquitted by the jury, but the trial has cost a
Speaker 1: fortune in legal fees and is likely to cost ker
Speaker 1: something even more valuable, her reputation.
Speaker 2: Matilda's fans have been left stunned after it emerged Captain
Speaker 2: Sam Kerr faced to London court overnight changed with harassing
Speaker 2: a police officer. Uk Met Police have released a statement
Speaker 2: this morning revealing that Sam Kerr was charged under Section
Speaker 2: four A of the Public Order Act that involves the
Speaker 2: use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior.
Speaker 1: In breaking news, Sam Kerr has been found not guilty
Speaker 1: of racially aggravated harassment by a London jury. Jacqueline Magney
Speaker 1: is the Australian's year of correspondent and she's been in
Speaker 1: London for this trial. Jack. I know you weren't a
Speaker 1: member of the jury, and of course in England, just
Speaker 1: like in Australia, juries aren't supposed to tell what happened
Speaker 1: in the jury room. But giving your best guess, why
Speaker 1: do you think this jury acquitted Sam Kerr?
Speaker 4: I think there were two issues here. One was whether
Speaker 4: they believed the police officer, Stephen Lovell, whether he actually
Speaker 4: suffered because of the racial or the alleged racial insults.
Speaker 4: He was a very kind of straight up and down
Speaker 4: witness and said he was hurt and humiliated, but it
Speaker 4: lacked a little bit of passion about what he felt.
Speaker 4: He didn't take any time off work, and also he
Speaker 4: gave that evidence in a written statement ten months after
Speaker 4: the event, when the Crown Prosecution Service wanted more information
Speaker 4: to go forward with the charge. So I think that
Speaker 4: may have played a little bit on the jury's mind.
Speaker 4: And I also think that the jury really felt a
Speaker 4: little bit sorry for Sam Kurve. I think that they
Speaker 4: could put themselves in her situation, that they realized she
Speaker 4: and Christi Muus were genuinely scared, and that the lead
Speaker 4: up to her swearing at the police officers may have
Speaker 4: been justified.
Speaker 1: Jack, You've written in your piece for The Australian about this,
Speaker 1: about how Sam Kerr arrived every morning in a kind
Speaker 1: of people mover or organized by Chelsea and jogged up
Speaker 1: the stairs of the court flanked by a couple of
Speaker 1: security guards. What do you think we've learned about Sam
Speaker 1: Kerr in her behavior during this trial.
Speaker 4: Well, we know she can swear. Also, I think she
Speaker 4: lacks a little bit of perspective because when it was
Speaker 4: put to her several times in the witness box whether
Speaker 4: now that she knew that the taxi driver had rung
Speaker 4: the police twice during the journey, he was so concerned
Speaker 4: about their behavior, of them standing in the back of
Speaker 4: the cab and kicking off, which saw some extensive damage
Speaker 4: to the taxi ultimately, and she just dismissed the taxi driver,
Speaker 4: said he was irrelevant. She did not concede that perhaps
Speaker 4: she had misinterpreted what had gone on, and she didn't
Speaker 4: offer any perspective on what went on other than she
Speaker 4: was just scared. And that's all the viewpoint that she
Speaker 4: felt that she could offer about that night. Now, of
Speaker 4: course she was very drunk, and the evidence showed in
Speaker 4: some inconsistencies in the evidence that perhaps she couldn't recall
Speaker 4: everything as best as what she perhaps claimed she could
Speaker 4: because there was some inconsistencies. So I think that sam Kerr,
Speaker 4: if she reflects truly back on what has happened, I
Speaker 4: think that she may concede that perhaps she made a
Speaker 4: few little errors that night herself. Yeah, looking at.
Speaker 1: How sam Kerr behaved in and around the court and
Speaker 1: on that body worn footage that we saw played to
Speaker 1: the jury, is your perspective that she was behaving like
Speaker 1: a bit of a brat or can it be explained
Speaker 1: as something more innocent, it was just a drunken night out.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's both. Really. I think that when
Speaker 4: you've had a few drinks, someone's character does tend to change.
Speaker 4: And as marvelous as she is on the football field,
Speaker 4: she's not marvelous of it after she's had a lot
Speaker 4: of drinks. And I think that we saw that the
Speaker 4: evidence on that video is shocking and very unattractive, And
Speaker 4: even her own lawyer told the jury that legal counsel
Speaker 4: was not hiding away from just how ugly that was portrayed,
Speaker 4: and how it portrays her and really now, even though
Speaker 4: she's one in Kingston Crown Court, I don't think she's
Speaker 4: one in the court of public opinion. And I think
Speaker 4: that most people who've seen that video will now form
Speaker 4: a different opinion of what they perhaps thought of her
Speaker 4: before the trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course she's been acquitted, which she might think
Speaker 1: is a justification of her decision to plead not guilty
Speaker 1: and to see it through to a full trial. But
Speaker 1: this is someone who's advised by Chelsea's very expensive media managers.
Speaker 1: Football Australia has media managers who would have been advising her.
Speaker 1: She of course, had engaged her own reputational expert, as
Speaker 1: you've written in The Australian. Why didn't any of those
Speaker 1: people tell her to plead guilty a year ago and
Speaker 1: just make this go away so that that body worn
Speaker 1: footage would never appear.
Speaker 4: Well, not only would that body worn footage never appeared,
Speaker 4: we would never have known about the case because when
Speaker 4: it appeared in Wimbledon Magistrates Court, it had not made
Speaker 4: the media. People were not aware of it and it
Speaker 4: would have just quietly gone away. I think perhaps she
Speaker 4: was receiving legal advice that if she had accepted a
Speaker 4: cause or accepted a guilty plead, she would have been
Speaker 4: slapped across the risk and given a fine, maybe some
Speaker 4: community service at worst. That it could impact on her
Speaker 4: ability to travel around the world. So maybe she felt
Speaker 4: that her career could be affected if she had some
Speaker 4: kind of criminal record in that sense, and so she
Speaker 4: also going to the Crown Court. She's before a jury
Speaker 4: and in the meantime, she had also tried to have
Speaker 4: the case thrown out of court because of the extra
Speaker 4: evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service had sought to get
Speaker 4: further statements from people involved in the case. They were
Speaker 4: accusing the police of abusive process and wanted it thrown out.
Speaker 4: Now we couldn't report that at the time it was
Speaker 4: under quite heavy reporting restrictions, but now that the jury
Speaker 4: has made its verdict we can now report on this.
Speaker 4: So she was trying to get the case thrown out
Speaker 4: so no one would know about it, and it was
Speaker 4: a bit of a lottery for her. So in the
Speaker 4: end she had to turn up in court. We all
Speaker 4: saw that footage, but she does not have a criminal
Speaker 4: record at all.
Speaker 1: Coming up, What will sponsors and football bosses make of Ker?
Speaker 1: Now you've covered sport for many years. You've got to
Speaker 1: know the most famous athletes in the world. She has
Speaker 1: sponsorships as well as contracts with Chelsea of course, and
Speaker 1: with the Matildas. How do you think this will affect
Speaker 1: her bankability and her reputation, her ability to make a
Speaker 1: living apart from just by scoring goals.
Speaker 4: I think in the short term there won't be any
Speaker 4: impact at all because the current sponsors will honor their contracts.
Speaker 4: I think what will happen is down the track that
Speaker 4: you'll find new sponsorship or renewals will be a lot
Speaker 4: more difficult. That sponsors will think we can go to
Speaker 4: someone else. They'll find other options, and I think that
Speaker 4: this will be quite damaging financially for her in the
Speaker 4: long term, not in the short term at all. And
Speaker 4: I think that she's coming into a different stage in
Speaker 4: her life now. She's about to have a baby, her
Speaker 4: partner's six months pregnant, and her footballing career. She's been
Speaker 4: off the field for a year. She's really got to
Speaker 4: prove herself now that she's in some kind of shape
Speaker 4: and that she's able to return to her best with
Speaker 4: her footballing career. So she's out of real crossroads at
Speaker 4: the moment and will be yet to be seen another
Speaker 4: twelve months. If we have this conversation, it'll be interesting
Speaker 4: to see whether she's bounced back in the football sense
Speaker 4: and also just dealing with a new family life.
Speaker 1: Finally, Jack, in your reporting from Britain and in my
Speaker 1: reading of the UK media, I see a lot of
Speaker 1: reports of the policing of language, of the criminalization of language.
Speaker 1: We've seen a prominent columnist visited by police and threatened
Speaker 1: with charges over a tweet that she made.
Speaker 3: Now you may have been following the case of Allison Pearson,
Speaker 3: the Telegraph journalist who got a visit from the police
Speaker 3: over a tweet that she made and deleted some time ago,
Speaker 3: and Essex Police have made a statement saying they have
Speaker 3: reviewed this case, having sought advice from the Crown Prosecution Service,
Speaker 3: they have advised that no charges should be brought in
Speaker 3: this matter with Is there.
Speaker 1: A climate in Britain now where freedom of speech is
Speaker 1: being curtailed do you think? And is this part of
Speaker 1: that trend or is the Sam Kirk case part of
Speaker 1: something different here?
Speaker 4: Well, in the UK they have something called their non
Speaker 4: crime hate offenses, where it's perceived that if you are
Speaker 4: hostile or prejudiced against somebody on the basis of race
Speaker 4: or ethnicity or six suality that you can be recorded
Speaker 4: and it's meant to be a little bit of an
Speaker 4: alert for the police that to keep track on people
Speaker 4: that might be a little bit of concern and maybe
Speaker 4: perhaps lean to some kind of extremes. But what we've
Speaker 4: found is that the police have been very vigilant about
Speaker 4: this and taking it to an extreme that perhaps the
Speaker 4: lawmakers didn't intend it to be. So it's been a
Speaker 4: political issue. And you've mentioned Alison Pearson, who is a
Speaker 4: columnist who was accused of a tweet that she made
Speaker 4: in good faith and that's what she believed, and yet
Speaker 4: she was deemed to be this could have been a
Speaker 4: non criminal hate crime. So it's one of these things
Speaker 4: that in the UK it's taken incredibly seriously, the whole
Speaker 4: issue of race. But people know this. They know that
Speaker 4: if they accuse somebody of an insult and happened to
Speaker 4: put a color on it, whether that's black or white,
Speaker 4: you're in trouble and it is perceived to be an
Speaker 4: insult and it is perceived to be the wrong thing
Speaker 4: to do. So I sense over here it's a lot
Speaker 4: more sensitive than what it is in Australia. And in
Speaker 4: Australia I feel that people would say I'll just grow
Speaker 4: a thick skin, But in Britain it's very much seen
Speaker 4: as something to be aware of and conscious of and
Speaker 4: sensitive to.
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Magnet is The Australian's You're a Correspondent. You can
Speaker 1: read all her reporting, plus dispatches from our network of
Speaker 1: journalists around the world, right now at The Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot au