PUBLISHER'S VIEW: The lengthy cluster of inquests will last many weeks, if not months. It will unfold amidst allegations of police and medical cover-ups of great interest to this Blog. I will wade into it from time to time.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
STORY: "Hillsborough stadium tragedy inquest: Families await a fresh moment for truth," by reporter Jonathan Brown, published by The Independent on March 27, 2014.
SUB-HEADING: "The first of the new inquests into a 25-year-old tragedy begins next
week, reopening old wounds but also reawakening hopes of closure and
justice. Jonathan Brown explains how much is at stake."
GIST: "These are once again tense and difficult days for the families of the victims and the survivors of the Hillsborough disaster. It may be nearly a quarter of a century since the crush – Britain’s
worst sporting disaster – claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool fans, but as
the latest milestone in their long fight for justice approaches, with
the new inquests days away, the old wounds are reopening......... The simple search for the truth drives the families forward.
“It will give us a final piece to our jigsaw and give us what we
consider to be the correct verdict on the death certificate.
Hillsborough certainly wasn’t an accident – it was a disaster waiting to
happen,” said Mr Kelly. The original accidental death inquest
verdicts are one of the most painful injustices of the tragedy and the
findings of the Hillsborough Independent Panel in 2012 made the quashing
of the verdicts a necessity and new hearings inevitable.........As well as revealing evidence of altered police statements and a
systematic smear operation to lay the fault for the disaster at the feet
of fans wrongly accused of being drunk, it concluded that up to 41 of
the victims might have survived if they had received adequate emergency
care.........When Lord Justice Goldring convenes proceedings in
Warrington on Monday, it will fall to a jury of 12 men and women to
answer four questions. The first two – the identity of the victims
and their place of death – are open to little doubt. The remaining
issues – the time of death and how the deceased came to die – will
occupy much of the eight months that the inquests are expected to last. At
the original hearing, the Coroner for South Yorkshire, Dr Stefan
Popper, ruled as inadmissible evidence from beyond 3.15pm – two minutes
after the first St John Ambulance trundled on to the pitch on that FA
Cup semi-final Saturday afternoon. It was a decision which
enraged and baffled relatives who asserted from eyewitness accounts from
fans that their loved ones had still been alive up to 45 minutes after
the cut off. The original inquest focused not on the effectiveness of
the rescue and resuscitation efforts but on the circumstances of the
crush, the panel found. Families were distraught at the coroner’s
unprecedented decision to record and publish the blood-alcohol levels of
all the victims. This was despite the discrediting of police claims
that drunken late-arriving fans had caused the tragedy. Evidence of
drinking, however, will once again be aired at the new hearing at the
request of counsel for the police. There was also dismay that
during the mini-inquests before the full hearing at Sheffield (resumed
only after it had been decided that there would be no criminal charges
arising from the tragedy) investigating officers from West Midlands
Police were able to present summaries of statements as fact before the
jury.
According to the panel, the 80-day inquests – the longest in
English legal history – had been “controversial in their organisation,
conduct and outcome”. At their conclusion in March 1991, the verdict was
greeted by cries and shouts of anguish from the families.".........(The story identifies among key issues: The response: How competent was the medical and police reaction to the unfolding tragedy? The 96 victims: The last hours of each victim will be recreated. Post mortem: Pathologists will reveal what happened to the bodies and the causes of death.")
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hillsborough-stadium-tragedy-inquests-families-await-a-fresh-moment-for-truth-9219843.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I
have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this
powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and
myself get more out of the site.
The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible
years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr.
Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of
Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"
section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It
can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
