The High Court has refused an application to surrender a man to Poland under a European arrest warrant, ruling that the available information did not establish whether his defence rights had been protected in one of the cases underlying his sentence.
Mr Justice Paul Burns delivered the judgment on 15 March 2021. The warrant sought the man’s return to serve the remaining 2 years, 8 months and 7 days of a 4-year-10-month sentence imposed by the Regional Court in Gdańsk in 2004. That cumulative sentence combined sentences in two earlier cases, one from the Regional Court in Gdańsk and one from the District Court in Sopot.
The man objected to surrender under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act, which concerns sentences imposed when a person was absent from proceedings. He also argued that the warrant did not explain how the remaining sentence had been calculated and that surrender was barred under section 37.
The issuing judicial authority said the man had been absent from the 2004 hearing that imposed the cumulative sentence, but had been notified, represented by court-appointed counsel, and served with the judgment and appeal instructions. He did not appeal. The judge was satisfied that the section 45 requirements were met for that hearing and that the man’s defence rights had been adequately protected.
The court also considered the 2011 decision revoking the man’s conditional early release. Information from Poland said the revocation followed limited engagement with probation supervision and failure to report a change of address. The judge concluded that the revocation did not change the nature or level of the original sentence, so section 45 did not apply to that hearing.
The records for one underlying case, reference II K 91/03, could not be sufficiently reconstructed to establish whether the man had attended the original proceedings or, if absent, whether the required safeguards had been met. The issuing authority could not provide further information. The judge said the man had not claimed that his defence rights were breached in the original conviction proceedings, but found it was not appropriate to infer that they had been protected when the relevant circumstances were unknown.
Because the cumulative sentence was a single sentence that could not be divided between the two cases, the court could not allow surrender in relation only to the other case. It therefore refused the application for surrender. The judge dismissed the man’s separate objections concerning the calculation of the remaining sentence and section 37.