The High Court has refused an application to surrender Robert Orłowski to Poland, where authorities sought to have him serve the remaining six months of a three-year prison sentence imposed in 2001 for four offences committed in 1992, when he was 17.
Mr Justice Paul Burns ruled on 2 March 2021 that an earlier High Court decision between the same parties prevented the Minister for Justice and Equality from re-arguing whether the second offence corresponded to an offence under Irish law. That earlier ruling had refused surrender on that ground and was not appealed.
The Polish warrant, issued on 1 August 2019, concerned convictions for violent assault on a police officer, insulting a public officer performing official duties, burglary and unlawful taking of a vehicle. The sentence was an aggregate one, and the parties agreed that no part could be allocated to a specific offence. They also agreed that surrender should be refused unless correspondence could be established for all four offences.
The current dispute concerned the allegation that Mr Orłowski insulted police officers using abusive words. The Minister argued that the conduct could correspond to an Irish public-order offence involving threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour in a public place, with intent to provoke a breach of the peace or recklessness as to whether one might occur. The Minister relied on information that members of the public were present and on Irish court decisions concerning breach-of-the-peace offences.
Mr Orłowski’s counsel argued that the 2011 High Court decision had already determined that this offence did not correspond to an Irish offence. The court found that the facts in the current warrant and additional information could be capable of establishing correspondence. But it held that this did not resolve the procedural issue: the earlier decision had addressed the same substantive question between the same parties, after full argument, and had not been appealed.
The judge concluded that Mr Orłowski was entitled to the benefit of that earlier determination, whether through issue estoppel or an accrued right to rely on the decision. He said the later Supreme Court ruling in Clifford did not allow the parties to reopen an issue already finally determined in this case.
The court refused the application for an order surrendering Mr Orłowski. It did not make a fresh determination that the alleged conduct could not correspond to an Irish offence; its refusal rested on the binding effect of the earlier ruling.