The High Court ruled that an English domestic arrest warrant remained in force on 21 June 2004, when a European arrest warrant was issued for Michael Fallon, also named as Michéal Ó Fallúin. The court concluded that the European warrant was duly issued within the meaning of section 10 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
The finding came in a supplemental judgment delivered by Ms Justice Finlay Geoghegan on 14 October 2005, during proceedings under section 16 of the Act. The court was addressing a preliminary issue about whether the European warrant issued by Bow Street Magistrates’ Court had been duly issued. It had adjourned the rest of the hearing to receive further evidence of English law.
The dispute concerned a domestic warrant issued at Bow Street on 16 December 2003. It was endorsed for execution in Ireland, where Fallon was arrested and brought before the High Court on 8 January 2004. The respondent’s barrister, Peter Cauldwell, had said in an affidavit that the arrest meant the English warrant was spent and no longer enforceable. The applicant’s barrister, Clive Victor Nicholls QC, argued that under section 125 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, the domestic warrant would not be executed until Fallon was arrested in England and brought before the Bow Street court named in it.
The judge resolved the disagreement on the affidavits without cross-examination. She noted that the English warrant required the respondent to be arrested and brought before Bow Street, and that he had not been brought there. She accepted Nicholls’s explanation of the English statute and found that the events in Ireland had not executed the English domestic warrant under English law.
The respondent’s counsel also submitted that the warrant had been withdrawn when the Attorney General sought to strike out separate extradition proceedings in Ireland. The judge obtained the order made in those proceedings on 22 June 2004. It recorded that the matter stood struck out and provided for the return of bail money to the surety, but did not refer to withdrawal of a warrant. In the absence of evidence that the warrant was intended to be withdrawn, the judge found no basis for further inquiry on that submission.
The judgment determined the warrant’s status and the validity of the European warrant for the issue before the court. It did not record the final outcome of the remaining section 16 hearing.