The Hillsborough Trial: A case to answer
01 November 2000
Extracts from the recently updated book "Hillsborough - the Truth"
On 6 June 2000 at Leeds Crown Court before Mr Justice Hooper, two former South Yorkshire Police officers stood trial for manslaughter. Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield and Superintendent Bernard Murray were the two senior officers responsible for policing the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough, Sheffield. 96 men, women and children were killed, hundreds injured and thousands traumatised as a result of a vice-like crush on terraces behind one of the goals. They were caged in pens with no way out to the front or to the sides.
Just minutes before the scheduled kick-off the police admitted over 2000 fans through an exit gate to relieve serious crushing at a bottleneck by the turnstiles. Unfamiliar with the stadium, they were left to walk unstewarded down a steep tunnel opposite the gate and into the back of the already full central pens. Given the sheer weight of numbers, the tunnel gradient and the confined space there was no way back. Those at the front of the pens, trapped beneath a high meshed fence, had the air compressed from their lungs. A barrier also collapsed bringing scores down in a tangled mass of limbs. At first, and crucially, the police mistook the mayhem for crowd violence. People died where they fell.
The Home Office Inquiry, before Lord Justice Taylor, found the cause of the disaster to be overcrowding and the main reason to be police mismanagement of the crowd. He severely reprimanded senior officers for their part in the disaster and their subsequent behaviour. Despite Taylor's criticisms, and the force's acceptance of "liability in negligence", the controversial inquests returned verdicts of accidental death. The Director of Public Prosecutions decided there was "insufficient evidence" to prosecute any police officer.
Nine years later, in August 1998, the bereaved families initiated a private prosecution against Duckenfield and Murray. This followed a decade's campaigning both to establish criminal liability and to access key documents, witness statements and the personal files on each of the deceased compiled by the police investigators. On 16 February 2000 Mr Justice Hooper issued a 38-page ruling committing the two officers for trial. Both were charged with manslaughter and with misconduct in a public office. Duckenfield was charged also with misconduct "arising from an admitted lie told by him to the effect that the [exit] gates had been forced open by Liverpool fans". The judge summarised the cases for the prosecution and defence as follows:
It is the prosecution's case that the two defendants are guilty of manslaughter because they failed to prevent a crush in pens 3 and 4 of the West Terraces [Leppings Lane] `by failing between 2.40 and 3.06 p.m. to procure the diversion of spectators entering the ground from the entrance to the pen'...that police officers should have been stationed in front of the tunnel leading to the pen to prevent access. It appears, at this stage, to be the defence case that neither of the officers, in the situation in which they found themselves, thought about closing off the tunnel or foresaw the risk of serious injury in the pen if they did not do so. The prosecution submit that they ought to have done. This is likely to be the most important issue in the case. There may well be a further issue: if the risk had been foreseen, would it have been possible or practicable to have closed the tunnel.
According to the judge, not only were the bereaved left with "an enduring grief", but with "a deep seated and obviously genuine grievance that those thought responsible" had not been prosecuted nor "even disciplined". The judge declined the defendants' submission that the delay in bringing the prosecution was such that a fair trial was not possible although he voiced "reservations about the manner in which the prosecution had been conducted". Both defendants, he noted, "must be