The High Court has ordered the surrender of Oliver Lown to the United Kingdom for prosecution on 11 offences alleged to have been committed between 2013 and 2019. It excluded one charge concerning possession of extreme pornographic images, finding that no corresponding offence under Irish law had been established.
In a judgment delivered on 14 December 2021, Mr Justice Paul Burns said the European arrest warrant sought surrender on 12 charges. They included five allegations of sexual penetration of a living animal, three of making indecent images of children, one of attempting to pervert the course of public justice, and charges involving heroin and cannabis possession, as well as possession of extreme pornographic images involving an animal.
The judge found the legal correspondence requirement satisfied for the charges that remained. He rejected the respondent’s argument that throwing a computer into a pond could not correspond to perverting the course of justice because he was not under arrest, the computer was not in police possession and proceedings were not underway. The applicant submitted that the act was intended to destroy or conceal evidence. The judge held that the alleged act was positive conduct intended to frustrate police investigation and prosecution, and that similar conduct, if proved, would amount to attempting to pervert the course of justice in Ireland.
The applicant could not identify an Irish offence corresponding to the UK charge of possessing extreme pornography, so the court was not satisfied that correspondence had been shown for that offence. The surrender order therefore excludes it.
The respondent also objected to information about the possible life sentence for the justice offence, which had been supplied by the UK Crown Prosecution Service after the warrant’s relevant section was marked “Not applicable”. The judge accepted the additional information and dismissed that objection. He also rejected an objection over the identity of the issuing judicial authority, finding that the warrant clearly showed it had been issued by Judge Peters of the Crown Court at Ipswich.
An objection based on the alleged location of the conduct was not pursued at the hearing. A separate challenge to the post-Brexit extradition arrangements was also not pursued after a Court of Justice of the European Union judgment. The High Court concluded that surrender was not precluded by the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 or another provision of that Act.