Criminal charges against four other men in relation to the disaster, which left 96 people dead, and its aftermath will also go to trial after the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, rejected the defendants’ applications for them to be dismissed.
Openshaw decided that a legal bar – a “stay” on prosecuting Duckenfield, which was imposed by the judge Justice Hooper when he heard the bereaved families’ private prosecution of Duckenfield in 2000 – should be lifted.
The Crown Prosecution Service announced last June that it intended to prosecute Duckenfield, following the holding of new inquests from 2014-16, and applied for the stay to be lifted.
Reading out a short ruling at Preston crown court, Openshaw said: “In respect of the defendant Duckenfield I lift the stay. I confirm that I grant the voluntary bill of indictment to allow prosecution for manslaughter to proceed. I decline to order a stay on that charge.”
Duckenfield faces 95 counts of manslaughter by gross negligence, with the criminal indictment accusing him of breaching his duty “to take reasonable care for the safety of those attending the Hillsborough stadium as spectators in respect of the dangers from overcrowding and consequent crushing”.
The offence of manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Duckenfield, and the four other men, had applied to have the prosecutions stayed on legal grounds.
Graham Mackrell, the former secretary of Sheffield Wednesday football club, which has Hillsborough as its home ground, will face two criminal charges for alleged breaches of safety legislation and his duties as the club’s safety officer.
Mackrell is accused of one offence relating to alleged contravention by the club of its safety certificate, particularly a failure to agree the number and arrangement of turnstiles to admit Liverpool supporters to Hillsborough.
The second charge accuses him of failing to take reasonable care as the safety officer, in the arrangements particularly of having sufficient turnstiles at the stadium “to admit at a rate whereby no unduly large crowds would be waiting for admission”. That second charge also accuses Mackrell of failing to take reasonable care to draw up contingency plans for coping with “exceptionally large numbers of people arriving at the ground” and to deal with situations where the available entrances “have proved insufficient to stop unduly large crowds from gathering outside”.
The maximum sentence for the first charge is two years in prison; for the second the maximum is an unlimited fine.
The CPS was not proceeding with a third charge against Mackrell, Openshaw said.
Donald Denton, a South Yorkshire police chief superintendent at the time of the disaster; Denton’s then deputy, the former chief inspector Alan Foster, and the then South Yorkshire police solicitor, Peter Metcalf, will face trial in Preston on charges of doing acts with intent to pervert the course of justice.
