The High Court dismissed Bogdan Pyzowski’s objection to surrender to Poland under a European Arrest Warrant and ordered his surrender under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, as amended.
In a judgment delivered on 22 May 2020, Mr Justice Paul Burns found that surrender was not incompatible with Ireland’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights or the Irish Constitution. The application concerned a conviction warrant: Pyzowski was sought to serve the remainder of a sentence, not to face a new trial.
The warrant relates to a cumulative prison sentence of three years, four months and 21 days for 10 offences of breaking into motor vehicles and taking, or attempting to take, items. The offences were said to have been committed in 2001. The judgment records that Pyzowski was convicted and sentenced in 2013, and that his appeal was dismissed in 2014. The sentence had been reduced to account for earlier detention.
Pyzowski argued that surrender would breach his fair-procedure rights because of culpable delay by the Polish authorities. He initially referred to the period from the offences in 2001, but during the hearing limited his objection to the three-to-four-year period between sentencing or the appeal decision and the issue of the current warrant in April 2017. He relied in part on a 2018 European Court of Human Rights friendly settlement concerning delay claims against Poland. The judgment says he received PLN 18,000, approximately €4,000, under that settlement.
The Minister for Justice argued that the period before Pyzowski’s earlier surrender to Poland in 2011 could not be revisited, and that the later period was neither egregious nor shown to have caused prejudice. The Minister also submitted that Pyzowski had left Poland knowing of the proceedings and sentence.
Justice Burns found that the three-to-four-year period, by itself, did not establish a fair-procedure violation. He distinguished delay before trial from delay in enforcing a sentence, noted that Pyzowski had participated in the trial but was absent for later dates, and found that he had identified no particular prejudice. The court concluded that he bore substantial responsibility for the period after sentence because he had left Poland and remained outside the country.
The judge dismissed the sole objection, found that surrender was not prohibited under section 37 or other relevant provisions, and ordered surrender to Poland. The judgment does not state when the order would be carried out.