The High Court refused an application for habeas corpus by a man held at Cloverhill Prison pending surrender to Spain, ruling that a mistaken reference in the committal warrant did not make his detention unlawful.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Michael Peart on 7 June 2005, concerned a warrant that said the surrender order had been made under section 16(2) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The judge found that the case had proceeded under section 13 and that the President of the High Court had intended to make the surrender order under section 16(1). The judgment said section 16(2) applied to a different arrest procedure involving a Schengen alert.
The applicant argued that the reference to section 16(2) was an error accepted by the respondents, and that the subsection did not apply. He submitted that the warrant was invalid and that the resulting detention order was unlawful. He also challenged how the warrant identified the person to receive him and raised other objections. The judge said the recipient-identification points were more appropriate for an appeal. A challenge concerning Spain’s designation under the Act was dropped after an affidavit stated that the relevant statutory instrument had been before the President.
The respondents argued that the President had heard the surrender application in accordance with law, considered the matters required under section 16(1), and decided to order surrender. They characterised the wrong subsection in the warrant as a technical error that did not invalidate detention.
Justice Peart found that the written judgment made the President’s intention clear and that the error had not breached or threatened a fundamental right. He held that the detention order was made under section 16(4), which required a detention order when a surrender order was made under section 16. The mistaken reference to section 16(2), he said, did not make the detention unlawful, though it might bear on the correctness of the surrender order.
The court refused habeas corpus. It did not amend the warrant: no amendment application was before it. The judge said correction could be considered under the slip rule or the court’s inherent authority, and that the matter might more appropriately be brought before the President, whose absence was temporary. The source ends during the judgment’s final sentence.