The barrister defending the former South Yorkshire police match commander, who was on duty at Hillsborough in 1989, against a charge of manslaughter relating to the deaths of 96 people there has described his prosecution as “breathtakingly unfair”.

Benjamin Myers QC, making his closing speech in David Duckenfield’s defence, said other factors and other people had contributed to the disaster at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground. These included safety flaws in the stadium’s design and a miscalculation of its safe capacity, crowd behaviour, police behaviour and human error in the running of the match.

Duckenfield, appointed to chief superintendent and Hillsborough match commander 19 days before the game on 15 April 1989, is “being singled out unfairly” for prosecution for gross negligence manslaughter, Myers said. “Many people contributed to the tragedy.”

Referring to the admissions of failure that Duckenfield made in March 2015 when he gave evidence at the 2014-16 inquests into the 96 deaths, Myers said the answers had been given after “gruelling” questioning and have been taking out of context. Duckenfield’s admissions to barristers Paul Greaney QC, representing junior ranking officers for the Police Federation, Christina Lambert QC and John Beggs QC have been read to the jury, and several were read by the prosecution’s lead barrister, Richard Matthews QC, at the end of his closing speech on Friday.

They included Duckenfield’s admissions to Greaney that he was in overall charge on the day, that his lack of knowledge of the layout at the Leppings Lane end of the stadium was “totally unacceptable”, that it was his decision not to delay the 3pm kick-off to ease the pressure of a crowd build up at the Leppings Lane turnstiles; that he decided to open a large exit gate, C, to alleviate that pressure, and that he should have thought through the consequences of that, and closed off the tunnel leading to the terrace’s central “pens” 3 and 4.

The jury has heard that a large number of the 2,500 people who came through gate C went down the tunnel, which was directly facing them, and into those pens where the lethal crush took place.

Myers said that the answers at the inquests had been given when Duckenfield was “questioned and questioned and questioned” over seven days, by ten different barristers.

“You can imagine how gruelling that must have been,” he said.

The answers, he said, have been “taken out of context with blatant disregard for explanations”.

The prosecution expected Duckenfield to be aware of dangers that other officers with much more experience of policing matches at Hillsborough did not, Myers told the jury. These included the change to the turnstile arrangements from the identical semi-final played between the same two clubs in 1988, which in 1989 required all 10,100 people, with standing tickets to support Liverpool, to go through only seven turnstiles.

Myers said the jury should ask, regarding the build up at those turnstiles, whether it was Duckenfield’s fault that experienced officers failed to manage the crowd on the approach to them. Other officers also did not identify dangerous overcrowding in the pens, Myers said, and when gate C was opened, some police officers working on the concourse area did not direct people away from the tunnel leading to the pens.

Addressing the jury, of six men and six women, Myers said: “He had ultimate responsibility, say the prosecution. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, it seems David Duckenfield did have ultimate responsibility – for everyone else’s mistakes and miscalculations.”

He said the jury should bear in mind five warnings when considering the evidence against Duckenfield: the differences in football stadiums and supporters’ behaviour between 1989 and now; they should not judge him according to different standards from other people or artificial standards; they should bear in mind the limits of what he could see on the day, and not judge him in hindsight.

Matthews, for the prosecution, concluded his closing speech by acknowledging the case is “30 years late and 30 years later”, saying: “Some cases have a route to trial that are not straightforward, and you may think this is one of them.”

Matthews also made a closing speech in the prosecution case against Graham Mackrell, the Sheffield Wednesday secretary and safety officer at the time of the disaster. He is charged with failing to take reasonable care of people’s safety, due to the number of turnstiles at the Leppings Lane end.

Both Mackrell and Duckenfield have pleaded not guilty.

Myers is expected to continue his closing speech for Duckenfield on Monday.

