A trial of police officials in connection with the Hillsborough disaster has collapsed.
Three men formerly of South Yorkshire Police faced charges of perverting the course of justice in the aftermath of the unlawful killing of 96 Liverpool fans.
But ex-chief superintendent Donald Denton, detective chief inspector Alan Foster and the force’s erstwhile solicitor Peter Metcalf were all acquitted.
The charges related to alleged changes to witness statements provided by officers who had been present at the tragedy in Sheffield on April 15, 1989
However judge Mr Justice William Davis refused to allow the trial to reach jury stage as he believed there is no legal case for any of the men to answer.
He told the court at Salford’s Lowry that the charges were prepared for the Taylor Report into the disaster and therefore an ‘administrative exercise’.
It means that only one of six men charged in 2017 over Hillsborough has been convicted in former Sheffield Wednesday secretary Graham Mackrell.
He was found guilty of a safety breach and fined just £6,500 in May 2019.
Match commander David Duckenfield was acquitted of manslaughter later that year while Sir Norman Bettison saw charges against him dropped in 2018.
Margaret Aspinall, whose teenage son James was killed at Hillsborough, labelled the latest trial collapse as ‘a cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up’.
She added: “We’ve been put through a 32-year legal nightmare looking for the truth and accountability.
“Now they’re saying the police were allowed to change statements and cover up at Taylor. The legal system in this country really has to change.”
The pain felt by victims’ families was further compounded by Metcalf’s barrister Jonathan Goldberg making defamatory claims about Liverpool fans.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Goldberg alleged Liverpool fans had behaved “perfectly appalling on the day, causing a riot that led to the gate having to be opened”.
Sue Hemming, the Crown Prosecution Service’s director of legal services, admitted that Wednesday’s ruling ‘will have been surprising to many’.
She said: “That a publicly funded authority can lawfully withhold information from a public inquiry charged with finding out why 96 people died at a football match, in order to ensure that it never happened again – or that a solicitor can advise such a withholding, without sanction of any sort, may be a matter which should be subject to scrutiny.”
An independent report into Hillsborough led to new inquests in 2016 which overturned the initial ruling that the deaths of all 96 had been accidental.