The three things the jury considered before finding Sam Kerr not guilty of racially harassing a policeman

There is no question Sam Kerr called a London policeman "stupid and white" — she was caught saying so on police body-worn camera.

So why did it take a week-long trial for a jury to find her not guilty on one count of racially aggravated harassment of Metropolitan Police Constable Stephen Lovell?

Here are the three key points the jury considered before handing down its verdict.

Sam Kerr's intent

To find Ms Kerr guilty of racially aggravated harassment, the jury was first asked by Judge Peter Lodder KC to assess the evidence and find whether she intended to cause Constable Lovell "harassment, alarm or distress" with her words.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones KC cross-examined Ms Kerr for hours on this point, arguing she had lashed out in anger at the officer.

"When you start name-calling, you're doing it to be offensive and offend aren't you?" Mr Emlyn Jones asked.

"Yes," Ms Kerr responded.

"If you're on the receiving end … it's distressing, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"So, if someone drunk and angry, aggressive — a stranger — starts abusing you personally, it's inevitable that it's going to cause upset, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"That's what you meant to do, isn't it?"

"No," she replied.

Mr Emlyn Jones argued there was no reason to say those words other than to hurt Constable Lovell.

The Australian Matildas captain said she expressed herself "poorly" in that moment and was embarrassed to watch herself behaving the way she did in the police video.

"The point I was trying to get across was I felt like they were treating me differently and not believing me and treating me as a person who had done something wrong because they were in a position of power. And I believed they were treating me differently because of the colour of my skin," Ms Kerr told the court last week.

She said she felt the officers were not believing her version of events about the taxi ride.

In the 34-minute body-cam video captured on the night of the incident and played in full and unedited to the jury, Ms Kerr and her partner, Kristie Mewis, tell police they thought the taxi driver was holding them "hostage".

The court heard the taxi driver called police after becoming concerned about the pair's behaviour, and was advised by the operator to drive to the nearest police station. Both Ms Kerr and Ms Mewis denied ever being told this by the driver.

Ms Mewis eventually admits to kicking out one of the windows of the taxi but says it was because she was scared for her life.

Much of the conversation captured on the video is officers trying to get the women to pay for the damage to the window, the taxi fare and the clean-up fee due to Ms Kerr being sick in the car during the journey.

Ms Kerr was arrested on a criminal damage charge despite her partner telling police she broke the window.

The charge was dropped after the pair paid 900 pounds ($1,796) to coverage the damage.

Ms Kerr repeatedly pleads with the officers to "listen to the recording" of the taxi ride. However the officers never physically swept the taxi for a camera, instead relying on the driver's word that he did not have one.

In Ms Kerr's evidence, she stated that throughout her time in the station, she felt like the officers were "antagonising" her.

"Firstly, [the police] not believing us, telling us things that I knew had happened, hadn't happened, even though they had no proof, making me feel like a liar, second guessing myself, calling me 'missy moo'. Many things," she said.

Ms Kerr's lawyer, Grace Forbes, argued that the stress and fear that her client felt for her life in the taxi was relevant to what she said.

"You might think the fears they felt, genuinely held, whether well-founded or not, were highly relevant to what happened that night," she told the jury as she closed her case.

The impact of 'stupid and white'

It wasn't enough for the jury to convict Ms Kerr on the basis that they were sure she intended to harm Constable Lovell with her words "stupid and white".

The jury needed to be sure that the words caused him "harassment, alarm or distress".

The defence pointed out that Constable Lovell didn't say how he felt after being called "stupid and white" in his first statement, which he wrote shortly after the incident on January 30, 2023.

He made first official mention of it in a second statement made nearly 11 months after the incident.

The second statement came after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) initially declined to charge Ms Kerr, saying the threshold of "harassment, alarm or distress" hadn't been met.

The police then launched an appeal, before the CPS requested more evidence of "harassment, alarm or distress".

In the second statement, Constable Lovell said the words "stupid and white" made him feel "upset", "belittled" and "shocked", adding that he felt that "they went too far and I took great offence to them".

Under cross-examination, Ms Forbes said it was a deliberate attempt to secure a criminal charge.

"I didn't make something up to get it over the line," he later told the jury.

Mr Emlyn Jones told the jury in his closing statement that Constable Lovell didn't "over-egg" his second statement, describing his words as "totally plausible".

But Ms Forbes said the timeline of events between his first statement and his second statement "utterly undermined" its credibility.

"Had he felt the impact he now asserts, he would have said so in that statement on the night," she told the jury.

Was 'stupid and white' racially aggravated

The final element that the jury had to be sure of was that the words "stupid and white" were racially aggravated.

The prosecution argued that they clearly were.

He reminded Ms Kerr that, in evidence, she said she felt that Constable Lovell couldn't understand what it was like to be a woman being driven in a taxi by a stranger and being scared.

Mr Emlyn Jones said that was an issue of a man not putting himself in a woman's shoes.

"What were you trying to express when you made that remark, 'You're stupid and white?'" Ms Kerr's lawyer, Grace Forbes, asked her client.

"That they would never, due to their power and privilege, experience what we had just gone through and the fear that we were in for our lives," she responded.

The jury heard there had been multiple experiences where she felt she had been treated differently by people because of the colour of her skin.

"At school I had experienced being in situations where teachers had instigated that I was the troublemaker or the starter of trouble when clearly we were in a large setting of people," she said.

"Also at a shopping centre, if I'm not dressed correctly, I have often been followed around the shopping centre by a security guard or staff member."

The defence argued that in the police station, she was scared and stressed and while she ultimately didn't express herself well, Ms Kerr didn't intend to racially harass Constable Lovell.

Ms Forbes also put to the court that the police response to Ms Kerr's claims was "completely unacceptable", arguing that officers never investigated her claims against the taxi driver.

She said Ms Kerr's state of mind and the actions of police had to be taken into account when considering the comment "stupid and white".

The jury was instructed to work through these three issues in order.

They were told to only move on to the next point if they were satisfied of the first.

The 12-person jury spent about four hours deliberating before returning the not-guilty verdict on Tuesday afternoon at Kingston-on-Thames Crown Court in London.