The High Court refused an application to surrender Jaroslaw Ostrowski to Poland, ruling that the European arrest warrant used to arrest him contained significant errors in key details about the domestic warrant underlying it.
Justice Michael Peart delivered judgment on 19 March 2010. The Polish warrant, issued on 7 January 2009, sought Ostrowski’s surrender for prosecution over alleged possession of 0.72 grams of marijuana in Wroclaw on 11 May 2006. The warrant stated that the offence carried a maximum three-year prison sentence.
After Ostrowski’s arrest in Ireland in October 2009, his lawyers learned that the domestic warrant reference and date recorded in the European warrant related to someone else. Poland later obtained a court ruling correcting those details and sent an amended warrant. The Irish applicant accepted that the original warrant contained errors but argued they could be corrected without refusing surrender. Ostrowski’s lawyers argued that the defective warrant should have been withdrawn and the corrected one separately endorsed before a new arrest.
Peart found the errors were significant, rather than technical. A person arrested under a European warrant was entitled to rely on the accuracy of its information, including the details of the decision said to be enforceable against them. The incorrect reference and date meant the warrant did not properly inform Ostrowski of such a decision, the judge said.
The later court correction and transmission of a corrected warrant did not cure the defect in the document endorsed for execution and used for the arrest. The corrected warrant itself had not been endorsed by the High Court, and Ostrowski had not been arrested under it. Peart said the proper course would have been to withdraw the first warrant, release him on that basis, obtain endorsement of the corrected warrant and arrest him again under it.
The judge also rejected the argument that the errors could be overlooked under section 45C of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, as amended. That provision allowed certain minor or technical defects to be disregarded where no injustice would result. Peart was not satisfied that the errors fell within that category, and held that the warrant used for the arrest was invalid and could not support an order for surrender.
Ostrowski also argued that surrender would be disproportionate given the small quantity of cannabis and the possible penalty. The court did not decide that issue. Peart said it could be considered if the Polish authority sought endorsement of another warrant without the errors identified in the case.