In spite of Duckenfield's confessions which his defense contested were "wrought" out of him as a "singled-out" out individual, it is difficult to see why it has been deemed that his negligence was not criminal in nature. This was what his defense were attempting to parse, and it's one I struggled to understand each day as I have been reading the daily reports. I can only surmise that there may have been elements of the jury who believed that he'd suffered enough and that his age and mental state were already showing signs of deterioration.
If this IS to be the last chapter in the Duckenfield story, then I suppose the only judicial precedent we can take from this is that a senior police officer only avoided a criminal verdict by "a whisker" in the lengthy wake of the events which occurred on that tragic day.
It's probably not the verdict which so many of us felt was just, but it will still carry great impact when it comes to police officers needing to be suitable for their roles and the accountability and scrutiny that they will face in the wake of any gross negligence.
I'm just looking for positives here, and the fact that Duckenfield's life eventually became characterized by four separate bouts of vigorous judicial scrutiny should hopefully permeate the mind-set of every single senior officer hereafter. If Duckenfield walks away from this as a broken "husk" of a man, albeit buoyed and relieved that he's avoided a criminal verdict, then it is for him to reconcile. If he is now "free" to speak out in a way that the legal proceedings have barred him from, then it will be interesting if he has anything enlightening to offer about the other "players" who surrounded him for the many years when justice was being sought. I won't hold my breath on this, but if anybody knows why the powers that be were so intent to stick to their "story" for so long, then this man does.
RIP the 96.