Hillsborough: why has the trial collapsed and what happens next?
A judge has stopped the trial of two former South Yorkshire police officers and the force’s former solicitor, who had been charged with perverting the course of justice for amending police statements after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
Why has the trial been stopped? Two ex-South Yorkshire police officers, Ch Supt Donald Denton and DCI Alan Foster, and the force’s then solicitor Peter Metcalf had been charged with perverting the course of public justice, for their roles in amending 68 police officers’ statements after the Hillsborough disaster.
The trial judge, Mr Justice William Davis, ruled that the offence could not have been committed, because the amendments were to prepare police statements for the public inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Taylor. That was a non-statutory inquiry, which Davis described to the jury as “an administrative exercise”, not a “course of public justice”.
So even if the amendments meant the South Yorkshire police withheld important evidence from the Taylor inquiry, that could not constitute perverting the course of justice.
How have bereaved Hillsborough families responded?
With dismay. Families whose relatives were among the 96 people killed condemned the outcome, saying that in effect it established that a police force was entitled to mislead a public inquiry into how their loved ones had died.
Davis, while ruling that the charge could not be put to the jury, said that had it been, Metcalf would have had a case to answer for amendments made to four officers’ statements.
Families’ lawyers argued at the 2014-16 inquests that the amendments removed all references to a previous police practice of closing a tunnel leading to the Leppings Lane “pens” when they were full. At the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham
Forest the officer in command, Ch Supt David Duckenfield, did not order the tunnel closed after he allowed a large number of Liverpool supporters in suddenly by opening a wide exit gate at the turnstiles.
Is this the end of the families’ battle through the legal system?
Outside court, Jenni Hicks, whose two daughters Sarah, 19 and Vicki, 15, were killed at Hillsborough, said it was. The families have been fighting for the truth, accountability from those responsible, and “justice for the 96” for 32 years.
Taylor concluded following his inquiry in August 1989 that safety failings at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground, and mismanagement by South Yorkshire police, caused the disaster, and that Duckenfield’s failure to order the tunnel gate closed was “a blunder of the first magnitude”. He also criticised the police for their campaign of alleging that Liverpool supporters had been drunk and arrived late and without tickets.
However, no criminal charges were brought, and the police renewed that campaign of blame before the first inquest. In March 1991 its jury produced a verdict of accidental death. The families fought a campaign against it for 21 years, finally seeing it quashed in 2012 following the landmark report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. The families’ fight was fully vindicated in April 2016, when the new inquest’s jury found that the 96 had been unlawfully killed due to Duckenfield’s gross negligence, and that no behaviour of Liverpool supporters had contributed to the disaster.
However, since then nobody has been held responsible for the deaths and injuries, or the police campaign of blame.
How do the acquittals reflect on the Crown Prosecution Service?
The families have been bitterly disappointed by the prosecutions. Just one person has been convicted for anything related to the Hillsborough disaster: Graham Mackrell, the then Sheffield Wednesday secretary, of a safety offence, for which he was fined £6,500.
The CPS made an unusually forthright statement in response to Davis’s ruling, saying many people would find it “surprising”. Sue Hemming, the CPS legal director, suggested the effect of Davis’ ruling was that “a publicly funded authority” – the South Yorkshire police – “can lawfully withhold information from a public inquiry, without sanction of any sort”.