The High Court has refused Robert Francis Stapleton’s application for discovery in proceedings over a UK request for his surrender to face trial on 30 alleged fraud offences.
In a judgment delivered on 23 November 2005, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the requested documents might be relevant to Stapleton’s objections but had not been shown to be reasonably necessary to argue them. The ruling concerned discovery for the surrender application under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. It did not decide whether Stapleton should be surrendered or determine his objections.
The alleged offences were said to have occurred between May 1978 and September 1982, with about £3 million involved. Stapleton argued that surrender would breach his rights concerning inhuman or degrading treatment and a fair trial, and that the passage of time meant he could not be prosecuted in Ireland for equivalent offences. These were objections to be considered at the later surrender hearing, not findings made in this discovery ruling.
Stapleton sought, among other material, transcripts from his wife’s 1986 UK trial and her 1985 committal hearing. He said evidence from three witnesses had been excluded at her trial and might also be excluded at his, risking an unfair trial. The judgment records that the exclusion was not disputed, but the judge said the transcripts were not necessary to establish the asserted risk; the significance of the earlier ruling could be argued at the surrender hearing.
He also sought records about his wife’s brief categorisation as a Category A prisoner in 1985, including who decided her security classification and who opposed bail. The judge said those documents were not necessary to establish that Stapleton faced a present risk if surrendered. He made no finding on the substance of the inhuman-treatment objection.
Other requests sought records about Stapleton’s whereabouts and UK authorities’ efforts to locate him, including police, diplomatic and security-service communications. The judge said such records could have some relevance to the delay issue, but Stapleton could explain his own movements and had the burden of showing that the passage of time was inordinate and attributable to the requesting state rather than to his own actions or inaction. The judge characterised the requests as a “fishing expedition”.
The court also rejected the request for an unedited recording of a three-day interview. Peart J said it was not necessary to support the inhuman-treatment objection. The judgment addressed whether the specified materials should be disclosed at this stage; it did not resolve the underlying surrender application.