The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by Saulius Ferenca and set aside a High Court order directing his surrender to Lithuania under a European Arrest Warrant. The court concluded that he could not be surrendered on the first offence described in the warrant and that the information provided did not establish the statutory sentence threshold for surrender on the other two offences.
The warrant sought Ferenca’s surrender to serve a sentence of two years and nine months imposed in Lithuania. The judgment says he had been sentenced on 5 January 2006 for three offences. The sentence was suspended on 8 March 2006, subject to conditions. After an alleged breach, a Lithuanian district court ordered on 15 September 2006 that he serve the sentence. The judgment records that none of it had been served.
The High Court had found that the second and third offences corresponded to offences under Irish law, but that the first did not. It nevertheless ordered surrender on all three, reasoning that the conduct described for the first offence was fraudulent in a general sense and could come within a separate provision of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. Ferenca appealed, arguing that the first offence did not meet the relevant statutory test and that the sentence information did not show the required threshold for any surviving offence.
The Supreme Court said the warrant’s form and the absence of information about Lithuanian law did not support treating the first offence as one covered by the provision for listed offences such as fraud. It accepted that the first offence did not correspond to an offence under Irish law and held that Ferenca could not lawfully be surrendered on that offence.
The court also considered the sentence imposed for all three offences. The warrant gave a global sentence of two years and nine months but did not clarify whether this was made up of concurrent sentences, consecutive sentences or a single sentence for all three convictions. The judgment noted that clarification could have been sought, but no request for information appeared to have been made. With the first offence excluded and no information showing that the required minimum sentence applied to either of the other offences individually, the court was not satisfied that the threshold was met.
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and set aside the High Court’s surrender order. It made no order directing surrender to Lithuania.