Hillsborough Disaster Acquittal
26 May 2021
Senghin Kong today achieved complete vindication for his client Peter Metcalf, the solicitor and first of three defendants who have now been acquitted of perverting the course of justice in the aftermath of the tragic Hillsborough disaster in 1989.
Mr Metcalf’s defence was that he was faithfully doing his job, giving honest legal advice to his clients. The trial judge Mr Justice William Davis has ruled that there is no case to answer.
A central plank of the prosecution case was their argument that the Taylor Inquiry in 1989 was a course of justice that was capable of being perverted by Mr Metcalf’s advice. It was Mr Kong who conceived the crucial submission that this was wrong in law, which was adopted by the co-defendants and upheld by the court. This was the fatal blow from which the prosecution never recovered.
The fight to clear Mr Metcalf of these false allegations has required four years of relentless work reviewing millions of pages of material and researching the many novel legal points which arose in this unprecedented prosecution. This would have been unsustainable under the ailing legal aid system.
By contrast the Hillsborough criminal investigations, which began in 2012, are said to have cost more than £100 million, funding an army of more than 300 investigators, solicitors and counsel. The investigations have been described by the Crown Prosecution Service as “the largest in English criminal history”.
Mr Kong was instructed with Jonathan Goldberg QC and Timothy Kendal by Ian McCombie of Ward Hadaway.
Links to press reports appear below:
Senghin Kong is a leading barrister specialising in privately funded criminal, civil and regulatory litigation. In 2017 he represented former Royal Marine Sergeant Alexander Blackman at his successful appeal against conviction for murder following a two year campaign for justice spearheaded by the author Frederick Forsyth and funded by donations collected by a national newspaper.
To instruct Mr Kong, please contact his Senior Clerk, Lee Hughes-Gage.
