The Hillsborough Report: Legal Implications

Recent charges proffered upon Rebekah and Charlie Brooks indicate that the CPS has an appetite for prosecuting high profile allegations of perverting the course of justice.

The Hillsborough Report found;

-Police attempted to change the record of events by removing unfavourable comments about policing in 116 witness statements and South Yorkshire Ambulance Service documents

-Wrongful allegations about fans' behaviour later printed in The Sun, originated from "a Sheffield press agency, senior SYP officers, an SYP Police Federation spokesman and a local MP".

-Police attempted "to develop and publicise a version of events that focused on - allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence."

-Police attempted to "impugn the reputations of the deceased by carrying out Police National Computer checks on those with a non-zero alcohol level."

Accordingly, could there be criminal implications for those involved?

Perverting the course of justice occurs where a person commits an act which has a tendency or is intended to pervert the course of public justice. The course of justice includes the police investigation of a possible crime. A false allegation which risks the arrest or wrongful conviction of an innocent person is enough. The word pervert can mean 'alter' but the behaviour does not have to go that far - any act that interferes with an investigation or causes it to head in the wrong direction may tend to pervert the course of justice. All the prosecution needs to prove is that there is a possibility that what the suspect has done "without more" might lead to a wrongful consequence, such as the arrest of an innocent person (Murray (1982) 75 Cr. App. R. 58).

The prosecution must prove an intention either to pervert the course of justice or to do something which, if achieved, would pervert the course of justice. All that is necessary is proof of knowledge of all the circumstances, and the intentional doing of an act which has a tendency, when objectively viewed, to pervert the course of justice.

Where there is sufficient evidence to justify a prosecution, prosecutors must go on to consider whether a prosecution is required in the public interest.In assessing the public interest, Prosecutors must decide the importance of each public interest factor in the circumstances of each case before making an overall assessment.

The maximum sentence following conviction for perverting the course of justice is life imprisonment. But the average sentence served by those jailed for the offence, according to Ministry of Justice figures from December 2010, is 10 months.

A 2007 appeal judgment said that appropriate sentences for perverting the course of justice should depend on the "seriousness of the substantive offence to which the perverting of the course of justice related, the degree of persistence, and the effect of the attempt to pervert the course of justice on the course of justice itself".

According to Archbold, the criminal lawyers' reference book, the normal range in sentencing those guilty of concealing evidence is four to 18 months – though longer in more serious cases.

Whether the CPS will adopt a similar approach to Hillsborough as it did to News International remains to be seen.