After Hillsborough, Theresa May urged to end 'character assassinations' at inquests

Character assassinations are a common part of the court experience for families when police or other state organisations are asked to explain their conduct in court, a charity says

St George’s Hall in Liverpool became a focus for remembrance following the verdict last month (Reuters)

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has been urged to ensure that the unedifying spectacle of South Yorkshire Police’s lawyers openly denigrating Liverpool supporters during the Hillsborough inquests forces action to end character assassinations in courts which are set up to establish a cause of death.

The South Yorkshire police commissioner Dr Allan Billings relieved the force’s chief constable, David Crompton, of his duties on Wednesday after the force spent £24 million on a defence which included fresh attacks on supporters’ behaviour. The charity INQUEST, which has supported the family and its lawyers, said that character assassinations are a common part of the court experience for families when police or other state organisations are asked to explain their conduct in court.

The mother of James Herbert – who died, aged 25, in 2010 after being left on the floor of a police station cell – has described being traumatised all over again after her re-examination by police lawyers at an inquest into his death. The long-running struggle for transparency over the death of Christopher Alder, who died in a cell in 1998, was characterised by similar conduct. In many such cases, families find themselves facing an arm of the state yet armed only with minimal funding, but the Hillsborough families at least had equal legal support, funded by Government.

INQUEST director Deborah Coles said that inquests, intended to understand more about deaths and to be preventative, were frequently adversarial, with lawyers seeking to deflect all blame. “The practice of deflecting blame and responsibility following contentious deaths persists, and the legacy of Hillsborough must be to put an end to this culture,” Ms Cole said.

“So often, we see the denigration of the person who died or an attack on the character of the family, rather than a search for the truth. We see lawyers behaving in an increasingly adversarial way to deflect from their clients’ own acts and omissions.”

Lawyers representing the families were astonished to find the South Yorkshire force – whose chief constable had formally apologised for the events of April 15 1989 after the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s damning 2012 report - were returning to the old myth that supporters’ behaviour somehow caused the disaster.

The inquest jury this week reached the same conclusion as every other court and commissioned report on the Hillsborough tragedy: that fans played no part.

But coroner Sir John Goldring allowed the notion to be raised and included in the list of 14 questions the jury was asked to consider – to the dismay of families’ lawyers.

South Yorkshire’s attempts to prove their case resulted such bizarre suggestions as the notion, according to one witness, that Liverpool fans were walking around outside Hillsborough with carafes of Canadian wine.

It became clear through the testimony that officers had started the task of demonstrating that drink did play part by commissioning photographers, at 5pm on the afternoon of the disaster, to set out to take photographs of discarded beer cans. Some of these photographs were presented in court. But when lawyers representing 22 families, asked that they be magnified for closer examination, beer cans were extremely hard to locate and this aspect of the case collapsed. “The perniciousness of that suggestion was appalling,” said Terry Munyard of the Garden Court Chambers, who represented three families.

John Beggs QC, representing match commanders David Duckenfield, Roger Marshall and Roger Greenwood, even produced a 2011 edition of Kenny Dalglish’s autobiography My Liverpool Home in an attempt to denigrate fans, quoting a section in which Dalglish wrote about “Scousers climbing through windows, dropping down ropes and pulling each other up, bunking in to the most famous stadium in the world” at the 1986 FA Cup Final.

Mr Beggs began to ask Dalglish: “So you, an icon, I am going to suggest a very important role model to young men who support Liverpool, laugh at the fact that they break the law by going in without tickets...” But Dalglish got the better of the barrister, at one stage laughing. “You’re the one that used the word ‘icon’, not me, and I’m only a guy, I’m only a normal human being that had a good job and, if other people think something of you, that’s up to them,” Dalglish said. “I don’t think I’m actually judge and jury on how people should behave and shouldn’t behave, so I don’t see what right I would have to say in there that people were wrong.”

Ms Coles said that the Hillsborough inquests had also demonstrated the importance of families having equal access to legal resources as the state, if proceedings which involved the police or NHS are to be an honest discussion and examination of a death. In cases which lack Hillsborough’s profile, family lawyers face the usual struggle for Legal Aid to take on the state.

“Those in authority who have responsibility for doing so must guarantee that, wherever and whenever proper scrutiny is required to right a wrong, families and victims are given the necessary resources – financial, legal and emotional – to seek truth, justice and accountability,” Ms Coles said. “It is the least they deserve.”

South Yorkshire police commissioner Dr Allan Billings has indicated that he may have to use taxpayers’ money to fund a future defence of Hillsborough match commander David Duckenfield, if the retired chief superintendent faces a manslaughter charge.

“There is a presumption in law that we fund officers who are in these difficult situations,” Mr Billings told the BBC Radio 5 broadcaster Phil Williams. “I have a legal obligation to fund – and no option but to fund – the legal costs of police officers who are involved in things like inquests. There are big costs here.” The total sum laid out to defend officers was £25m, with £20m being funded by the Home Office. [The five] superintendents would be the people who would have the appropriate legal team in place. Some of those officers are facing considerable jeopardy now.”