The High Court has refused to surrender Grzegorz Lukaszka to Poland to serve the balance of a 150-day prison sentence arising from possession of one gram of marijuana in Szczecinek.
The European arrest warrant said Lukaszka possessed the drug at an apartment on Zielona Street on 4 November 2009. A Polish court initially imposed a restriction-of-liberty sentence requiring unpaid controlled work for social purposes. In December 2011, that penalty was replaced with 150 days’ imprisonment, of which 148 days remained to be served.
Lukaszka raised two objections to surrender. First, he argued that the Polish reference to "marijuana" did not establish an equivalent Irish offence because the exact chemical composition had not been analysed.
Mr Justice Paul Burns rejected that argument. Additional information from Poland said a drug test was positive for marijuana and described the material as dried green plant. Following earlier authority, the judge held that "marijuana" is an ordinary alternative term for cannabis and that the conduct corresponded to unlawful possession of cannabis under Irish law.
The second objection succeeded. Lukaszka said he had not been notified of, attended or been represented at the December 2011 hearing which converted his unpaid-work sentence into imprisonment.
Polish authorities said he had been summoned through rules allowing documents sent to an unchanged address to be treated as served. They also confirmed that the court had exercised discretion when deciding the extent of the replacement imprisonment and could not establish whether Lukaszka’s presence might have affected that decision.
The Minister ultimately accepted that the 2011 proceeding was a hearing for the purposes of the European rules protecting people sentenced in their absence, and that the necessary safeguards could not be established.
The High Court therefore refused surrender. The ruling does not disturb the Polish conviction; it prevents surrender on this warrant because the process which produced the prison sentence did not meet the required in-absentia protections.