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The trial of Mr Metcalf, Ch Supt Denton and DCI Foster

  1. The extent and consistency of the amendment process led the IOPC to refer several individuals who had been involved in overseeing or implementing the process to the CPS, for decisions on whether they should face criminal charges of perverting the course of justice and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. 
     
  2. Having reviewed the evidence, the CPS announced that Mr Metcalf, Ch Supt Denton and DCI Foster would be charged with perverting the course of justice. The three men went on trial on 19 April 2021. However, on 26 May 2021, having heard arguments from legal experts for the prosecution and the defence, the judge, Mr Justice William Davis, ruled that the defendants had no case to answer. 
     
  3. This was because the offence they were charged with was perverting the course of justice in relation to the amendment of officer accounts presented to the Taylor Inquiry. Before the trial, a different judge (Sir Peter Openshaw, who had been the judge in the trial of Ch Supt Duckenfield and Mr Mackrell) ruled that as the Taylor Inquiry was a non-statutory departmental inquiry, it was not a course of justice. The case against Mr Metcalf, Ch Supt Denton and DCI Foster therefore required the prosecution to demonstrate that the amendment of officers’ accounts that were submitted to the Taylor Inquiry could also have affected the Popper Inquests or the subsequent criminal investigation conducted by WMP—both of which were courses of public justice. The judge concluded that the prosecution had failed to demonstrate this. 
     
  4. Of the 68 amended accounts that were submitted by the CPS, Mr Justice Davis identified just four where he believed the amendments were significant enough to potentially mislead and therefore support a charge of perverting the course of justice, if the Taylor Inquiry had been a course of justice. However, he acknowledged that a key part of the prosecution case related to the consistency of the amendments and the impact this had on the overall body of evidence SYP presented.