The Supreme Court has ordered the surrender of Dariusz Sas in respect of all four offences listed in a European Arrest Warrant issued by a Polish judicial authority. In a judgment delivered on 18 March 2010, it dismissed Mr Sas’s appeal against surrender on two offences and allowed the Minister for Justice’s cross-appeal against the High Court’s refusal to surrender him on the other two.
The High Court had ordered surrender in relation to allegations that Mr Sas threatened and abused his mother and cycled on a public road while drunk. It refused surrender for two theft offences, finding the warrant’s descriptions insufficient to establish correspondence with Irish offences. Both sides appealed those parts of the High Court decision.
The Supreme Court upheld the surrender order for the threat and cycling offences. The threat offence was described in the warrant as occurring in Koszalin between February and September 2005, and supplemental information from the issuing authority said Mr Sas intended his mother to believe the threat would be carried out. The Court rejected a late challenge to the use of that information, observing that its admissibility had not been raised in the High Court or in the notice of appeal. It also held that the sentence issue raised in Mr Sas’s appeal did not prevent surrender where the relevant composite sentence related to offences for which surrender was being ordered.
The Minister’s cross-appeal concerned the warrant’s descriptions of petrol thefts on 18 dates from September 2002 to February 2003, and the theft of two fog headlights and other items from a car in March 2003. The Supreme Court said the High Court had erred by rejecting correspondence because the warrant used the word “stole” without detailing each act’s precise mechanics. In the context of these descriptions, the word could be given its ordinary meaning, which conveyed the relevant intention; the petrol theft description also said the conduct was to the detriment of the named petrol company.
The Supreme Court therefore allowed the cross-appeal on both theft offences and ordered surrender in respect of them as well. The judgment addresses correspondence between the described conduct and Irish offences for surrender purposes; it does not determine the underlying allegations anew.