What is ‘perverting the course of justice’?ĭoing an act tending and intended to pervert the course of justice is a common law offence (i.e.
Mr Metcalf was also accused of having drafted a template witness statement for four police officers in relation to civil court proceedings involving (among others) South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, effectively telling those officers what to say. The prosecution case was that each of the men had deliberately amended witness statements given by police officers present at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989, with the intention of removing material likely to cause embarrassment or invite criticism at the inquiries that would inevitably follow. Peter Metcalf – a retired solicitor – and Donald Denton and Alan Foster – both retired police officers – were charged with committing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of public justice. So what happened in this case, and why is this trial over before the defence case has started?
This ruling by Mr Justice William Davis came as a surprise to many outside observers moreover, there have been instinctive suspicions – understandable given the lengthy history of state failings and misconduct that has defined the aftermath of 15 April 1989 – of further cover-up, and of justice denied. Today, at the Crown Court at Manchester (sitting in a temporary “Nightingale Court” at the Lowry theatre in Salford), the trial of three men accused of offences arising out of the Hillsborough disaster was brought to an abrupt halt, when the judge ruled at the close of the prosecution case that the defendants had “no case to answer”.
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