Hillsborough officer's manslaughter charge 'unfair', court hears

The manslaughter case against David Duckenfield, the former South Yorkshire police officer who commanded the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough at which 96 people were killed, is “deeply and bitterly unfair”, his defence barrister has told his trial.

Benjamin Myers QC, outlining Duckenfield’s defence in an opening speech to the jury, said he was criticising the prosecution case for singling out Duckenfield to be criminally charged with gross negligence manslaughter when many other factors and people were to blame, including other police officers.

Myers pointed out that in the prosecution’s opening speech, Richard Matthews QC said there may have been “collective and personal failures on the part of very many, if not all,” of those responsible for the planning and organisation of the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, attended by 54,000 people, on 15 April 1989.

Some failures and causes of the tragedy went back years, Myers said, including the metal fencing and over-calculation of the safe capacity for the Leppings Lane terrace at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground where the lethal crush took place.

The prosecution of Duckenfield, who was promoted to chief superintendent and Hillsborough match commander 19 days before the semi-final, sought to hold him responsible for “everybody else’s mistakes”, Myers said. “That makes the mistake of confusing the command responsibility he had as a match commander with criminal responsibility for what went wrong.”

For Duckenfield to be singled out, Myers told the jury, “we say quite plainly that it is bitterly unfair”.

The defence argues that several factors contributed to the disaster and meant “something like this was going to happen sooner or later”, including “bad stadium design” at Hillsborough, “bad planning” of the semi-final, as well as “crowd behaviour, police behaviour, mistakes by individuals and genuine human error.”

Duckenfield, 75, is sitting not in the dock but in the well of court one at Preston crown court, two rows behind Myers, who pointed him out to the jury of eight women and four men.

Myers told them that football hooliganism was the “overarching” context for the metal fencing and style of policing in 1989, saying matches were characterised by “the sudden outbreak of mass disorder and even violence in and around football stadia”. He told the court that football was “very different” then compared with conditions at matches now, featuring “an almost obsessive focus upon segregation of opposing supporters”, which was regarded as crucial in the 1980s.

The previous year, 1988, Hillsborough had hosted an FA Cup semi-final between the same two clubs, which was generally regarded as successful, Myers said. The prosecution alleges that the crucial difference, and the reason for the 1989 event culminating in disaster, was the appointment of Duckenfield to replace the previous, highly experienced Hillsborough match commander, Ch Supt Brian Mole.

Myers said the defence would argue there were other differences between the two years, including changes to the turnstile arrangements at the Leppings Lane end, which were designated for all 24,000 people with tickets to sit in the north and west stands and to stand on the Leppings Lane and north-west terraces. Myers said there had also been significant cuts to police staffing from 1988 numbers, there were problems with police radios in 1989, and many of the people supporting Liverpool arrived late.

“There is no doubt that a large number of people arrived in the Leppings Lane area relatively late,” he told the jury.

Referring to evidence Duckenfield gave at a public inquiry held by Lord Justice Taylor shortly after the disaster, Myers said the jury should bear in mind Duckenfield’s state of mind in “the raw aftermath” and the burden he had carried since.

Of Duckenfield’s evidence at the 2014-16 inquests held in Warrington, which Matthews referred to in his opening speech, Myers said the jury should make “reasonable allowance” for the stress Duckenfield was under and the limits to his memory then.

Family members of several of the people killed at Hillsborough were in the public seats at the Preston court, and the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, told the jury that the trial was also being broadcast to Liverpool, where more people were in attendance at the Cunard building.

Duckenfield denies the manslaughter charge. The trial continues.