Despite those who passed at Hillsborough being found to have been unlawfully killed, only one person has ever been successfully prosecuted relating to the disaster.
Ninety-seven Liverpool supporters died as a direct result of their injuries sustained at Hillsborough in 1989.
Only one individual has ever been successfully prosecuted for what happened at Hillsborough – the stadium safety officer, Graham Mackrell, was fined £6,500.
He failed to ensure there were enough turnstiles to prevent large crowds from building up outside the Leppings Lane end of the ground. There were just seven turnstiles open for over 10,000 supporters.
“That was a health and safety offence he was charged with, not with a negligence-type offence,” journalist David Conn told This Is Anfield.
In 2019, former Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, who ordered and subsequently lied about the opening of exit gate C – the gate opposite the tunnel to the overfilled pens – was found not guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.
• READ: Hillsborough: The Truth – Facts about the disaster
Duckenfield, who was match commander at the fatal semi-final, was found to have been grossly negligent by the jury at the 2016 inquest.
However, this wasn’t decided a criminal court case and, when he was prosecuted for gross negligence manslaughter, the 2019 jury acquitted him of criminal charges.
In addition, solicitor Peter Metcalf and retired police officers Donald Denton and Alan Foster were accused of altering police statements and helping to cover up police failings.
Their trials collapsed on a technicality.
Conn explained: “Three police officers were charged with an offence called perverting the course of public justice, through a process of amending the statements of police officers after the disaster.
“So police officers had made statements then there was a process of reviewing them and suggesting that they be amended.
“That case was basically stopped, thrown out, because the judge ruled that those police statements had been made for principally the first public inquiry that was made after the disaster which was by Lord Justice Taylor, the famous Taylor Reports.
“The judge in 2021, and that’s how long it all took, found that the format of the Taylor Inquiry wasn’t a course of public justice. It didn’t, in effect, qualify as a court case.
“It was more like what I think he called an administrative inquiry, so therefore, even if the statements had been amended in a way that was very serious, and he didn’t say whether it was or not, but even if they had been, they wouldn’t have committed that criminal offence of perverting the course of public justice.
“And that was the basis on which they were acquitted. They were formally found not guilty.”
The 97 are still waiting for real justice, something that may never come.
