The High Court has refused an application to let UK authorities prosecute John Joseph Myles Connors for theft, burglary and attempted burglary, finding there was no evidence that an issuing judicial authority had authorised the request for consent.
In a judgment delivered on 11 January 2022, Ms Justice Caroline Biggs considered an application under section 22(7) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The application sought the court’s consent to proceedings in the UK for offences not covered by the warrant under which Mr Connors had been surrendered to Northern Ireland.
Mr Connors had consented to surrender on 8 July 2021 under a warrant issued in Northern Ireland for him to serve the balance of a custodial sentence imposed in 2020 for attempted burglary. He was surrendered on 17 July. The separate UK warrant, issued on 7 July for a prosecution, was later sent to the Irish Central Authority with an email dated 10 August describing it as a consent request.
The court examined correspondence about the warrants. The UK Central Authority believed two warrants had been sent to Ireland on 5 July, while the Irish Central Authority believed it had received only the Northern Ireland warrant. The UK prosecution warrant said Mr Connors was serving a sentence in Castlerea prison and referred to the separate Northern Ireland warrant. The judge said those details were accurate when the warrant was issued but no longer accurate when it was later submitted as a consent request.
The judge accepted that a TCA warrant could be used to present information for a section 22(7) request, provided the documents, read as a whole, made the request’s purpose entirely clear. She found the email and attached warrant did not do so. The email did not refer to Article 27 of the Framework Decision or expressly state that consent was sought to disapply the specialty rule.
The decisive problem was the lack of evidence that the issuing judicial authority had asked for or authorised the request. It was sent by an official attached to the National Crime Agency, which the warrant described as the central authority. The court found no evidence that the issuing judge knew of Mr Connors’s changed circumstances or had approved converting the original prosecution warrant into a request for consent to further prosecution. The judge said this was a fatal flaw because a fundamental requirement was that the request be issued by a named issuing judicial authority.
Mr Connors had also raised objections about identity and whether the alleged acts corresponded to offences under Irish law, but those points were not pursued at the December 2021 hearing. The court was satisfied that identity and correspondence had been established, and that the minimum gravity threshold was met. It dismissed the objection to using a TCA warrant as the form of request, but ultimately made no order granting consent under section 22(7).