The High Court refused to surrender Miroslav Sevcik to the Czech Republic under one of six European arrest warrants, finding that the warrant and follow-up information did not clearly establish how many offences it covered or what convictions and sentences had resulted. The court rejected his objections to the other five warrants and ordered surrender under those warrants for prosecution.
In a judgment delivered on 8 May 2017, Ms Justice Donnelly considered warrants seeking Sevcik in connection with alleged thefts. The warrants were issued by Czech authorities in June 2016. The court found that the allegations in all six met the Irish legal threshold for surrender under section 38 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. That finding did not resolve the separate objections concerning trial in absentia and the rule of specialty.
The difficulty concerned the second warrant, for three alleged thefts. The Czech authority later told the court that Sevcik had been convicted in those proceedings and that a cumulative punishment had been imposed. It also said the warrant sought surrender for an earlier offence, recorded in a separate file. The original warrant and earlier clarification described three offences and did not clearly include that earlier matter. The court found no clear account of how many offences surrender was sought for, whether the relevant trials took place in Sevcik’s presence, or what sentences had been imposed. It therefore refused surrender under that warrant.
The other five warrants referred to an earlier theft conviction as relevant to the classification or potential penalty for the alleged offences. The court accepted the Czech authority’s explanation that Sevcik was not being sought for prosecution or sentence execution for that earlier offence under those warrants. It found no evidence that the authorities would pursue him for another offence without first obtaining the required consent under the specialty rule. The court also accepted clarification that three of those warrants concerned one criminal act each, despite two Czech legal provisions applying to each act; only the penalty for the more serious theft offence could be imposed.
The court rejected the objections under sections 22 and 45 for the five remaining warrants and ordered surrender for prosecution on the first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth warrants. The order did not include surrender under the second warrant or decide the respondent’s guilt on the alleged offences.