Hillsborough disaster: six people, including David Duckenfield, charged

Six people, including two former senior police officers, have been charged with criminal offences over the deaths of 96 people at the Hillsborough disaster and the alleged police cover-up that followed.

David Duckenfield, the South Yorkshire officer who was in command of policing at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in 1989, has been charged with the manslaughter of 95 people.

The 96th, Tony Bland, died four years later after his life support was switched off; a manslaughter charge cannot be brought in his case because his death came more than a year and a day after his injuries were sustained.

Sue Hemming, the Crown Prosecution Service head of special crime and counter-terrorism, said the CPS would allege that Duckenfield’s failure to take personal responsibility on the day was “extraordinarily bad and contributed substantially to the deaths of each of those 96 people who so tragically and unnecessarily lost their lives”.

Sir Norman Bettison, the former chief constable of Merseyside and West Yorkshire police, who was an inspector in the South Yorkshire force at the time of the disaster, has been charged with four counts of misconduct in a public office.

On the four charges of misconduct in a public office relating to Bettison, Hemming said the officer allegedly told lies about his involvement in the disaster. “Given his role as a senior police officer, we will ask the jury to find that this was misconduct of such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder,” she said.

Graham Mackrell, the Sheffield Wednesday chief executive and officially designated safety officer for the Hillsborough stadium, has also been charged with breaching the terms of the ground’s safety certificate and failing to take reasonable care under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The three other men are all charged with doing acts with intent to pervert the course of justice, for the process by which statements made by South Yorkshire police officers on duty at Hillsborough were subsequently reviewed and changed.

Donald Denton, the South Yorkshire police chief superintendent who operated in a senior role in that process, his deputy, chief inspector Alan Foster, and the then South Yorkshire police solicitor, Peter Metcalf, have all been charged.

Trevor Hicks, president of the Hillsborough Families Support Group whose teenage daughters Sarah and Vicki were killed, said the news was a vital step forward.

“If I’m honest I didn’t think we would get to this day, no,” he said. “We didn’t think we would. This is a success for society at large. There are no winners but it sends a message out that nobody is above the law. After Grenfell Tower and others, the message is ‘watch out, families will come after you.’”

Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James was killed, said she felt the families had turned a corner. “The message this sends is ‘never give up. Carry on fighting’. This should never happen again. No one should go through this to get to the truth. That’s the legacy of this.”

Of the decision to charge, Hemming said: “Following our careful review of the evidence, in accordance with the code for crown prosecutors, I have decided that there is sufficient evidence to charge six individuals with criminal offences.

“Criminal proceedings have now commenced and the defendants have a right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”

She said that in order to bring the case against Duckenfield, the CPS will have to make a court application for a removal of the legal bar on further prosecutions imposed by the judge who heard the private prosecution brought by the families themselves in 1999. “We will be applying to a high court judge to lift the ‘stay’ and order that the case can proceed,” Hemming said.

Bettison is accused of having lied about his own involvement within South Yorkshire police after the disaster, including describing his role as “peripheral” to Sir David O’Dowd, then chief inspector of constabulary, when he applied to be the chief constable of Merseyside police in 1998.

Bettison is also charged with lying in a subsequent statement to the Merseyside police authority that he had “never attempted to shift blame onto the shoulders of Liverpool supporters”. The two further charges allege that he lied in September 2012, after the publication of the Hillsborough independent panel report, when he issued press releases saying he had never suggested Liverpool supporters’ behaviour caused the disaster, and had never “besmirched” supporters.

Bettison said he was “disappointed to be charged” and would “vigorously defend” his innocence. “The charge is not in relation to my actions around the time of the disaster but in relation to comments I made years afterwards. I will vigorously defend my innocence as I have been doing for nearly five years.

“I will not be making any further statement so as not to prejudice any future proceedings.”

The CPS also considered bringing charges against Sheffield Wednesday football club, the South Yorkshire metropolitan ambulance service and the Football Association (FA). Hemming said Sheffield Wednesday could not face charges as a legal entity as it “only now exists on paper”. She added there were “no directors or others listed who form the company and therefore no one who can give instructions to answer any criminal charge or enter a plea”.

There was insufficient evidence to prosecute senior staff from the ambulance service, she said. There was also insufficient evidence to bring a case against the FA, which was considered for breaches of health and safety legislation and the Safety of Sports Grounds Act. Hemming said “there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction against them”.

Families of those who died gathered at Parr Hall, a venue in Warrington, near Liverpool, to hear the news directly from representatives of the CPS.

Family members who were given the news personally in a meeting with Hemming said there was a feeling of relief that charges had been brought. Leo Fallon, brother-in-law of Andrew Sefton, who was 23 when he was killed at Hillsborough, said it was gratifying to see some charges brought but said it had been too long to wait until 28 years after Andrew’s death.

He said: “There is a sense of relief among families, and we have to wait and see what the outcome will be. But our feeling is it has taken far too long; if it had been dealt with properly at the time, it would have damaged people less, and cost the public less.”

Barry Devonside, whose son Christopher, then 18, died in the lethal crush on the Leppings Lane terrace, said: “Fortunately the families have behaved with the utmost dignity. In my mind we had a son – and I don’t want to make stupid comments – but he was a perfect son in every way. He had respect for himself, and for his mum and dad, and for the public.”

The charges are the latest significant landmark in a 28-year campaign for accountability fought since the disaster by the families of the 96 people who died, survivors of the crush and the wider Liverpool and football supporting communities.

Last April the jury, which heard new inquests into the deaths, determined following two years of evidence that the 96 people had been unlawfully killed, and that the conduct of Liverpool supporters who attended the match did not contribute to the dangerous situation.

In January, the two new criminal investigations into the disaster and South Yorkshire police conduct afterwards announced that they had sent files of evidence to the CPS on 23 individuals and organisations.

Fifteen of those 23 files related to the circumstances that led to the disaster itself on 15 April 1989, in which hundreds of people suffered injuries and trauma as well as the 96 people who were killed. The remaining eight files were sent by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, relating to their inquiry into the way the police compiled evidence and presented its case in public and to the subsequent legal procedures.

The new inquests were ordered after the first verdict in 1991 was quashed by the high court in December 2012, following a 21-year campaign by the families and a report in September 2012 by the Hillsborough Independent Panel.

The panel’s report prompted the new police criminal investigation, Operation Resolve, into the events at the semi-final, which led to the lethal crush, and by the IPCC into the alleged efforts by South Yorkshire police to cover up their own responsibility and pervert the course of justice.

The criminal investigations, based in five floors of a Warrington office block, have cost a combined £100m over four-and-a-half years. The government has funded the costs of legal representation for the bereaved families, who struggled to fund their battle through the courts for 23 years before the panel’s report, facing police lawyers paid out of public funds.

Lawyers who represented 22 of the families at the inquests said: “The [families] remain keen to see the criminal process properly pursued for those who have been charged and given that the rights of the defendants should be respected they do not intend to indulge in speculation about the outcome of criminal trials.

“They do however hope that the memories of their loved ones and the integrity of the fans who attended Hillsborough will be respected during the process.”

The defendants, other than Duckenfield, will appear at Warrington magistrates court on 9 August.