Hillsborough families attack ‘ludicrous’ acquittals of police
Bereaved Hillsborough disaster families have condemned the “ludicrous” decision to acquit two former South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s former solicitor on charges of perverting the course of justice, bringing to a close their 32-year fight for justice.
Peter Metcalf, 72, a former solicitor for the force, and the then Ch Supt Donald Denton, 83, and DCI Alan Foster, 74, had been accused of changing 68 officers’ statements to withhold important evidence and criticisms of the police operation, and “mask the failings” of the force.
However, the judge at the trial at Salford’s Lowry theatre, Mr Justice William Davis, ruled there was no legal case to answer because the altered police statements were prepared for Lord Justice Taylor’s public inquiry into the disaster.
That was not a statutory public inquiry, at which evidence is given on oath, but an “administrative exercise”, Davis told the jury, so it was not a “course of public justice” that could be perverted.
Speaking outside court on Wednesday, Deanna Matthews, the niece of victim Brian Matthews, said the situation was “ludicrous” and the law was “not fit for purpose” and needed to change.
Of six men charged with offences over Hillsborough in 2017, the police officer in command, Ch Supt David Duckenfield, was acquitted of manslaughter in 2019, Sir Norman Bettison had charges dropped in 2018, and Metcalf, Denton and Foster have now been acquitted. The only conviction has been against Graham Mackrell, then secretary of Sheffield Wednesday, who was found guilty of a single safety offence, and fined £6,500.
Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-yearold son, James, was killed in the disaster and who was the last chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, called the outcome a “cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up”, adding: “We’ve been put through a 32-year legal nightmare looking for the truth and accountability. Now they’re saying the police were allowed to change statements and cover up at Taylor. The legal system in this country really has to change.”
Later Aspinall held a joint press conference with the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and the Liverpool metro mayor, Steve Rotheram, in front of the Hillsborough memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield football ground. They called for the urgent introduction of a law to impose on all public authorities a “duty of candour” in public inquiries and other investigatory processes.
“The Hillsborough law is needed to close the loophole that has allowed this to happen,” Burnham said. “There needs to be a duty of candour in law for public officials, there needs to be parity of legal funding at inquests between the state and bereaved families. Until we correct that, inquests will be an uneven playing field.”
Burnham and Rotheram condemned comments made by Metcalf’s barrister, Jonathan Goldberg QC, on
BBC Radio 5 live after the trial collapsed, in which he claimed the behaviour of Liverpool supporters was “perfectly appalling on the day, causing a riot that led to the gate having to be opened”.
Bereaved family members were outraged at the comments. Burnham pointed out that Goldberg was contradicting the findings of the 2016 inquests jury, and said he would “consider whether further action can be taken with professional regulatory bodies to hold the individual to account for comments that are patently untrue”.
The crush on the Leppings Lane terrace of Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough football ground at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest on 15 April 1989 killed 96 men, women and children. Families fought a 21-year campaign against the first 1991 inquest verdict of accidental death, which followed the South Yorkshire police campaign to avoid responsibility for the disaster and allege that Liverpool supporters’ misbehaviour was to blame.
That inquest was finally quashed in 2012. In 2016, the jury at new inquests determined that the 96 victims were unlawfully killed due to gross negligence by Duckenfield and rejected the police allegations, determining that no behaviour of Liverpool supporters had contributed to the disaster.
The trial’s collapse will lead to searching questions for the Crown Prosecution Service, whose decisionmakers were urged by families’ lawyers to charge a wider conspiracy by South
Yorkshire police, not focus narrowly on changed statements.
Many families have been scathing about the CPS’s conduct of the prosecutions and were disillusioned after Duckenfield’s acquittal. Few regularly attended the trial in Salford, or at St George’s Hall in Liverpool where it was being broadcast live.
Sue Hemming, the CPS director of legal services, said the outcome of the trial “will have been surprising to many”. In a statement she said: “That a publicly funded authority can lawfully withhold information from a public inquiry charged with finding out why 96 people died at a football match, in order to ensure that it never happened again – or that a solicitor can advise such a withholding, without sanction of any sort, may be a matter which should be subject to scrutiny.”