Five men have appeared in court to face criminal charges relating to the deaths of 96 people at Hillsborough, more than 28 years after the disaster.
Families whose relatives were killed in the lethal crush at the FA Cup semi-final on 15 April 1989 attended the first hearing on Wednesday, in court two on the first floor of the magistrates court in Warrington.
All five of the defendants, who sat alongside each other in the dock behind a reinforced glass screen, gave indications that they intend to plead not guilty to the charges when their cases are heard.
Graham Mackrell, the former secretary of Sheffield Wednesday and the football club’s officially designated safety officer for its Hillsborough stadium, was asked to stand in the dock, and he stated in a quiet voice that his intention was to plead not guilty.
Lawyers for the other four men accused – Sir Norman Bettison, Donald Denton, Peter Metcalf and Alan Foster – gave their indications to the senior district judge and chief magistrate, Emma Arbuthnot, that they intended to plead not guilty.
Bettison, 61, the former chief constable of Merseyside and West Yorkshire police, who was a chief inspector in the South Yorkshire force at the time of the disaster, is charged with four counts of misconduct in a public office. He is alleged to have lied subsequently about his role following the disaster, in statements he made in 1998, then after the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel report in 2012.
Denton, a South Yorkshire police chief superintendent at the time; Foster, a chief inspector; and Metcalf, who was the force’s solicitor in 1989, are all accused of 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 reviewed and changed.
Mackrell, who is expected to be tried separately, is accused of two counts of breaching the terms of the Hillsborough stadium’s safety certificate contrary to the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975, and failing to take reasonable care under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
Christine Agnew QC, prosecuting the charges against Mackrell, and Sarah Whitehouse QC, leading for the Crown Prosecution Service in the cases against the other four defendants, asked that they should be referred to the crown court for trial. Arbuthnot referred the cases against all five men to Preston crown court and said the first hearings were scheduled to take place on 6 September. All five men were remanded on unconditional bail.
David Duckenfield, the then South Yorkshire police chief superintendent who was in command of policing at the football match, has also been charged, with the manslaughter of 95 people. No charge has been brought for the 96th victim, Tony Bland, because he died when his life support was turned off in 1993, longer after his injuries were sustained than the legal time limit for the criminal offence, of one year and one day.
Duckenfield did not appear with the other defendants to face the charges because the CPS must first apply for the high court to lift a legal bar on further criminal proceedings against him which was imposed in 1999 after he had faced a private prosecution.
The charges have been brought by the CPS following the new inquests into the deaths of the 96 people, which concluded on 26 April last year after more than two years of court hearings, the longest case ever heard by a jury in British legal history.
Speaking outside the Warrington magistrates court before the hearing of the criminal charges, Evelyn Mills, whose brother Peter McDonnell was, aged 21, one of the 96 people killed at the semi-final, said: “This is the beginning of another milestone in the history of Hillsborough.”
Christine Burke, whose father Henry, 47 at the time, was killed, said: “There is still a long journey but we will see it through.”
