The Supreme Court dismissed John Richard Murrell’s appeal and affirmed the High Court order postponing his surrender to the United Kingdom while domestic criminal charges were being determined.
The appeal concerned an earlier Supreme Court order, made on 3 February 2009, which postponed surrender until Murrell was acquitted or convicted of a specified offence under the Children Act 2001, and, if convicted, until he no longer had to serve any resulting prison sentence. The High Court later made a further postponement order on 16 December 2009 under section 18 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
Murrell argued that the earlier postponement ended when the District Court struck out the original charge sheet on 27 May 2009. A replacement charge sheet relating to the same offence was filed immediately, with more specific particulars. He submitted that the charge had been disposed of, the postponement had lapsed and the time allowed for surrender had expired. He also argued that section 42 of the 2003 Act barred surrender because the Director of Public Prosecutions may have been considering further charges when the Supreme Court made its 2009 order.
The Minister for Justice disputed those arguments. The Minister’s counsel told the Supreme Court that no further postponement application had been made in relation to the replaced charge; the November 2009 application concerned the five additional charges brought in May.
The Supreme Court held that striking out and immediately replacing the charge sheet did not amount to an acquittal, conviction or final disposal of the offence. The February 2009 order referred to the offence itself, not to a particular numbered charge sheet, so the replacement did not bring that postponement to an end. The court also found no evidence that, by 3 February 2009, the Director of Public Prosecutions was considering the additional charges later brought in May. It rejected the section 42 argument on that basis.
The court therefore dismissed the appeal and affirmed the High Court’s postponement order. Its decision addressed the continued operation of the postponement and the statutory bar raised on appeal; it did not determine the domestic criminal charges or the underlying UK offences.