The High Court has struck out Francis Lanigan’s challenge to aspects of Ireland’s European Arrest Warrant procedure, ruling that the proceedings had no possibility of success.
In a judgment delivered on 11 November 2016, Mr Justice White granted the State defendants’ motion to dismiss Lanigan’s plenary proceedings. The case challenged the constitutionality of parts of the European Arrest Warrant Acts and sought, among other relief, to have a surrender order set aside. The court considered the defendants’ motion against the amended statement of claim delivered in March 2016.
The proceedings arose after the High Court ordered Lanigan’s surrender to Northern Ireland in September 2015, following an application under section 16 of the 2003 Act. That application concerned a European Arrest Warrant seeking his return to stand trial on charges of murder and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. Those charges relate to the 1998 killing of John Stephen Knocker in a hotel car park in Dungannon. The judgment records the charges and surrender order; it does not determine guilt.
Lanigan’s amended claim included complaints about how the surrender hearing was conducted, including the handling of information from the requesting jurisdiction and refusals to allow cross-examination or discovery. He also challenged the appeal-certification requirement in section 16(11), and sought to add allegations based on a report about conditions at Maghaberry Prison published after the surrender decision.
White J said the plenary case could not be used to rehearse issues already raised in the section 16 proceedings. He also refused the proposed additions concerning the later prison report: the report had not been before the surrender court, and the defendants had no opportunity there to consider or respond to it. The judge said the serious allegation that a letter considered in the surrender proceedings was misleading or fraudulent was not appropriate to decide in this strike-out application.
On section 16(11), the judge concluded that the constitutional challenge was bound to fail, referring to earlier High Court authority upholding the appeal-certification arrangement. On section 20, which allows the court or Central Authority to seek further information from the issuing state, he relied on Supreme Court authority concerning the receipt and consideration of such information in surrender proceedings. He concluded that the procedure is not an adversarial trial and that information with established provenance may be admitted, with its weight for the court to assess and with the respondent not barred from calling contrary evidence.
The judgment’s final page records the court’s conclusion that there was “no possibility of success” and that the motion to strike out should be determined in favour of the defendant applicants. The source text provided does not include a separate formal order or any costs direction.