The impression one gets on the last day of the trial is the prosecution failed to prove without a reasonable doubt that John Terry engaged in racist abuse of his own volition. The evidence is largely circumstantial, through the divination of a lip reader, and through the reconstruction and revisionism of Anton Ferdinand, who did himself no favours meeting John Terry post match and dismissing it as “handbags”. The suspicion of actual malevolence could not be upheld definitively as the less egregious error of judgment which the defense claimed led Terry to sarcastically replay what Ferdinand thought he heard him say.
Terry’s record is not that of a racist although he’s done plenty of other bad stuff which makes him an unmitigated so and so. This should be clearly differentiated from Luis Suarez who understood the power of that racist term and used it to goad Patrice Evra who promptly brought it to the attention of the authorities.
The verdict should be in tomorrow. But Terry should be acquitted. FIFA can then turn its attention to the real racists whom we had the misfortune of seeing at the 2012 Euro.